Standard 10.10 Conduct of Individual Private citizens are frequently involved in terroristic and quasi-terroristic crime as the immediate victims of abduction and hostage-holding tactics. In some instances, individual victims may be selected on the basis of their personal or professional characteristics; in many others, they may be targeted on an essentially random basis. Thus, although some private citizens have more cause than others to prepare themselves for the experience of victimization, all members of the community should be aware of the general principles of conduct that are most likely to lead to a safe, successful resolution of the incident as a whole, and best adapted to preserving the safety of the victim. These guiding rules include the principles that: 1. Victims should generally comply quickly and without protest with orders or directions from their captors, and should generally make no attempt to use personal physical force against their captors. 2. In all instances, victims should attempt to establish dialog with their captors, taking care to: a. Express serious, noncontentious interest in their captors' political and personal beliefs; b. Attempt, whenever possible, to persuade their captors that alternative means of achieving their aims exist; c. Avoid conveying information that may be of tactical use to their captors; and d. Elicit information that may be of use in identifying and apprehending their captors, either during or after the incident. 3. Where several victims are involved, they should take every safe opportunity to discuss and evaluate their situation, exploring in particular: a. Their impressions of the objectives, characters, and susceptibilities of their captors; b. The victims' own strengths, weaknesses, and capacities for self-help; and c. The means available to the victims to secure material and emotional support. 4. In exchanges with law enforcement authorities and other trustworthy outsiders, victims should attempt to convey as much information as possible on: a. The identity and objectives of their captors; b. The size, strength, and deployment of the group involved; c. The number, condition, and location of victims; and d. The features of the incident site that may have tactical significance. 5. In the event of an assault on the incident site by law enforcement, victims should ordinarily seek the best available cover, and should not ordinarily engage their captors directly. Commentary The recommendations included in this standard are offered in clear, positive language, out of the belief that a calm advance consideration of the prospect of terroristic and quasi-terroristic victimization will increase the abilities of those persons who are actually victimized to survive, to assist others, and even to contribute to the resolution of the incidents in which they are involved. At the same time, however, these recommendations are offered with caution. Distilled from the actual experiences of the relatively small number of persons who have successfully endured terroristic and quasi-terrorist captivity and given public accounts of it in recent years, these recommendations represent conclusions that are inevitably impressionistic and-to some degree -unverifiable. Because no systematic research effort has attempted to analyze and generalize the victim's experience, no scientific advice to future victims can be offered. Instead, a rough effort must be made to identify which techniques appear to have worked, and which appear to have failed. Despite its affirmative tone, then, this standard offers only tentative advice. The Problem of Maintaining Control This standard, as a whole, is obviously premised on the proposition that victims of terroristic and quasi-terroristic kidnappers and hostage takers can retain or regain substantial conscious control over their own conduct, despite the initial shock of victimization. This proposition will not hold true, of course, for all victims or for all incidents; it is believed, however, that one of the most promising ways of increasing the likelihood that victims' selfcontrol will be maintained or reestablished during incidents of extraordinary violence is to promote advance consideration of the prospect of victimization. It is notoriously difficult to attract and hold attention for a reasoned discussion of any highly unpleasant topic; human nature dictates that most prospective victims of terrorism or quasi-terrorism will be more comfortable considering that prospect in primarily emotional terms-or not at all. Responsibilities to self, to family, and to the community, however, all dictate taking the path of greater resistance. This is particularly true of high-risk individuals, who are significantly more likely than their fellows to be targeted as victims by terrorists and quasiterrorists. Like high-risk organizations, these individuals can often identify themselves-if they are able to accept the unpleasant realization of their exposure and vulnerability. To a certain degree, moreover, high-risk individuals can assist in preparing one another for the prospect of victimization. Members of vulnerable families, workers in vulnerable firms, and persons affiliated with unpopular political causes should discuss-seriously, openly, and completely-both their exposure to extraordinary violence and the principles that should guide their conduct in the event of victimization. In the course of such discussions, the principles presented in this standard should be critically examined. Physical Resistance Of these principles, those that will prove applicable in the greatest number of instances are the recommendations against the use of force by victims against their captors, whether on their own or in connection with the tactical use of force by law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, it is believed important to stress that nonagression should be considered a general rule for victim conduct, and that any use of force should be viewed as an exception to that rule and specifically justified before it is undertaken. Occasions may arise in which the apparent cruelty or instability of a hostage holder will combine with a relatively favorable balance in the capabilities of captives to apply force, to justify victims' efforts to resolve an incident through force. In general, however, the balance of capabilities will be in the overwhelming favor of the terrorist and quasi-terrorist, while the possibilities of victims' promoting their own survival through nonbelligerency will be real, if far from certain. In this more common configuration of circumstances, victim self-help is obviously ill advised. Victims should also be aware that as a general matter the first hours of captivity represent the period of greatest risk. It is during this initial phase that self-help, if justified, to improve the odds of survival is most likely to be successful. Thereafter, the level of real risk posed by even the most threatening captor will generally decline-while the victims' opportunities to take advantage of a captor's uncertainty or inattention will also diminish. To this generalization, important exceptions do exist: A captor's exhaustion may, for example, make self-help especially likely to succeed late in the course of an incident, while increased law enforcement pressure may make self-help later in an incident particularly necessary. As a rule, however, victims who have survived the initial phase of captivity should be particularly circumspect in considering the use of force against their captors. Captor-Victim Interaction The principle that victims should make conscious, continuous efforts to establish a dialogue with their captors is the best established of all the recommendations for self-protection included in this standard. Indeed, common sense as well as actual experience teaches that the more human a victim appears to his or her captors, the more difficulty they will encounter in carrying out threats of violence against that victem. One need not involve the so-called Stockholm Syndrome-the asserted tendency of captors to identify increasingly with victims over time, and vice versa-to provide a justification for efforts by victims to establish and maintain personal contact with those who have victimized them; as the victim acquires individuality for the captor, violence will almost inevitably become less likely. This standard recommends that, wherever possible, the terrorist's or quasi-terrorist's grievances and opinions be made the subject of interchange, and that where necessary that interchange should be victim initiated. This recommendation does not stem from a view that any victim should stake his or her survival on success in persuading a captor of the victim's sympathy with any personal or political cause. Although it is clearly critical that the victim take a constructive, nondisparaging, and respectful stance in exchanges with his or her captors, there is little evidence that the victim's interest is served by forced or artificial pretenses of agreement; an appearance of honest interest is generally sufficient, and far more possible to achieve. Wherever possible, victims should seek to expand exchanges concerning their captor's beliefs and grievances into more general interchanges, and to both give and elicit information of a more personal kind; where general conversation between victim and captor is possible, the likelihood that a recognition of the victim's humanity will help to stay the captor's violence is obviously increased. Family, background, and education are obvious topics for such expanded interchange. And wherever a victim can identify some commonality of past experience with his or her captor, he or she should seek to stress it in conversations that follow. In other recommendations, this standard urges that captives initiate discussions aimed at eliciting information of possible practical value to their survival, and that they exercise whatever influence they possess or gain to persuade their captors that personal alternatives to extraordinary violence do, in fact, exist. Exchanges of those sorts, however, are only secondarily desirable; when these topics cannot practically be broached, they should be abandoned. Of primary importance is the establishment and maintenance of contact and dialog-on any topic or all topics. References 1. Cooper, H.H.A. "The Terrorist and the Victim," Victimology, Vol. 1, Summer 1976, p. 229. 2. Fly, Claude. No Hope But God. New York: Hawthorne, 1973. 3. Jackson, Sir Geoffrey. Surviving the Long Night. New York: Vanguard, 1973. 4. Jenkins, Brian M. "Hostage Survival: Some Preliminary Observations." Santa Monica, Calif.: The RAND Corporation, 1976. Standard 10.11 Community Action in the Aftermath of Disorder and Terrorism Among the most damaging medium- and longterm consequences of crimes of extraordinary violence are the stresses they create within the community at large. By dramatizing divisive social issues, by undermining public confidence in law enforcement, by elevating levels of concern over personal safety, or—in some instances—even by putting one group in the community in violent confrontation with others, disorder and terrorism can have lasting erosive effects that long outlast the duration of particular incidents. Where a serious incident has occurred, individual community members and community groups have special roles to play in promoting processes of healing and reconciliation. In particular: 1. Community groups and their leaders should take the initiative in promoting full public discussion of any major incident of extraordinary violence, including examinations of: a. Underlying issues and grievances; b. Citizen reactions to law enforcement performance; c. Reactions to the performance of other official and nonofficial agencies; and d. The steps required to prevent recurrence of similar incidents. 2. Community-run rumor control efforts commenced during incidents of extraordinary violence should be maintained, generally at a reduced level of operation, until public fears of an imminent recurrence have dissipated; where incidents of extraordinary violence are or are suspected to be likely to become-frequent, consideration should be given to the establishment of permanent, community-operated rumor control centers. 3. Private relief agencies should continue, in the aftermath of an incident, to attempt to identify and aid persons and families who have been adversely affected by extraordinary violence; whenever appropriate, the direction of relief efforts should be to encourage resettlement within any geographical area that has been temporarily rendered uninhabitable. 4. Health care workers and private health care delivery organizations should be alert for incidentrelated health problems, including both adverse psychological and physical effects; special attention should be devoted to the personal problems of incident victims and, where they are numerous, the organization of special programs of assistance should be considered. 5. Persons and groups with special counseling and pastoral functions should devote similar attention to incident-related personal problems and to the needs of incident victims. 6. The community as a whole should endeavor to prevent future incidents by promoting tolerance of, and legitimate opportunities for the expression of, all political and ideological viewpoints, as well as by addressing underlying social causes of extraordinary violence through positive measures. Commentary This standard urges community efforts to speed the process of recovery from the effects of extraordinary violence, and to repair the damage that disorder and terrorism do-not only to individual victims, but to the social fabric as a whole. The recommendations presented here are generally applicable ones, suitable for implementation in the aftermath of any incident, regardless of type. But because the nature of the community efforts that will be most important is determined by the kinds of harm that have been inflicted, it is appropriate to restress, at the outset, the varying community impacts of the different forms of extraordinary violence. True terrorism represents a form of criminality perpetrated with the express purpose of creating confusion and anxiety in the community; a terrorist attack or campaign is a success, in its own terms, when it generates or aggravates public fear, citizen distrust of government, or conflict among elements of the private community. As a practical matter, the fates of individual direct victims of terroristic crime are of real and urgent concern. These victims' needs, however, are relatively easy to identify and to address, when compared with those of the indirect victims of terrorism-a class that may include virtually every member of the affected community. In essence, this standard urges that those members of the indirectly victimized community who have special skills or occupy leadership positions should commit themselves to aid others in overcoming the effects of terroristic crime. Violent mass disorders affect the community at large at least as significantly as terroristic incidents, but in different ways. Generally, no intent to cause long-term division or dissension within the community can be attributed to participants in disorder. Rather, where any coherent purpose can be identified, it is usually the dramatization of a particular grievance or the expression of general discontent; however inappropriate or misguided, these tactics aim at unifying public opinion rather than fragmenting it. In practice, of course, the consequences of mass disorder seldom include any immediate drawing together of community opinion on disputed issues. They do, however, comprise reactions of anger and fear within various elements of the private community. Those who took no part in the disorder, but were threatened by it, are alienated from those who did participate. Participants in disorder, in turn, are further estranged from the community at large, and particularly from those members of it who offered violent resistance to them during the disorder. Finally, the whole private community, including participants in disorder and nonparticipants alike, is generally left dissatisfied with the actions taken by officials and particularly by law enforcement officials-in resolving the incident. Regardless of the species of extraordinary violence in question, then, the natural and predictable consequences of serious incidents include public fear, division, anger, and suspicion. Only the passage of time, and the gradual restoration of normal living patterns, can overcome some of these effects. Others can be best addressed by official efforts, such as the postincident police-community relations measures discussed in Standard 6.26 (Community Relations Efforts in the Aftermath of Extraordinary Violence). But the community's capacity to promote the rapid healing of its own wounds should not be underrated. The Importance of Discussion It is a premise of this standard that the healing process must involve a full and frank public airing of any issues on which the community is divided in the aftermath of an incident. These may be of many kinds: issues related to underlying discontents dramatized by terrorism or disorder, issues involving the assignment of responsibility for violent actions by community members, and issues involving the character and quality of law enforcement response are obvious examples. It is believed, however, that where the community's return to normality is concerned, the precise nature of the issues aired may be less important than the fact of their airing. So long as fears and resentments remain unexpressed, they cannot be effectively addressed or countered. Even more important, however, they cannot be purged. Many of the issues that deserve communitywide discussion in the aftermath of disorder are, in fact, either insoluble or soluble only in the long term. Even in the short term, however, there are benefits to be derived from giving concrete expression to conflicts of views that have previously been uncommunicated-or even unacknowledged. Concrete examples of the importance of a process of issue-surfacing and discussion can be found in the records of the major civil disorders of the 1960's. For many communities, these events were catalysts for discussion, debate, and action; in particular, the postincident discussions conducted in a number of jurisdictions brought to the surface-although they certainly did not resolve-long standing problems of personal and institutional racism that communities had previously chosen to ignore or downplay. These problems had been of special significance in the etiology of disorder, but their significance for the social health of the communities in question went far deeper. Postdisorder discussion in the community be |