Terrorist Kidnappings for Ransom: Explaining Hostage Outcomes

In the wake of the death of her son, James Foley, Diane Foley stated, "I pray that our government will be willing to learn from the mistakes that were made and to acknowledge that there are better ways for American citizens to be treated" (Cumming and Vinograd 2015). The recent American deaths at the hands of terrorist groups have brought kidnapping and ransom policy to the forefront of the American psyche. In an effort to understand why hostages are released or killed in situations where a ransom is asked, we attempt to isolate and test key variables using a binary logistic regression. Our results show that paying a ransom significantly decreases the likelihood that a hostage will be killed. We also find that religious extremist groups are not more likely to kill a hostage than other groups. Other variables are tested and discussed. We hope that this study will inform policy makers on kidnapping situations for ransom and guide our understanding in kidnappings for ransom.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Mullen, Stephanie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jennie Schulze
• Mark Haas

• hostage
• international terrorism
• kidnapping
• ransom
• terrorism
• terrorists

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/962

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1978