Beyond Organisational Convergence: Comparing Social Learning and Moral Neutralisation in Criminal and Terrorist Behaviour

Abstract

This article examines whether organised crime and terrorism should be understood as behaviourally distinct forms of illegal violence or as activities shaped by shared social and cognitive mechanisms. While the crime–terror continuum usefully explains how criminal and terrorist groups may cooperate, exchange resources, adopt similar techniques, and develop hybrid characteristics, it does not fully explain how individuals come to participate in violence. Drawing on social learning theory, neutralisation theory, and moral disengagement, this theory-guided integrative review compares organised criminal and terrorist behaviour. It argues that both may involve differential association, favourable definitions, learned skills, social reinforcement, and mechanisms that neutralise moral restraints. However, these similarities do not establish equivalence. Terrorist ideology can collectivise grievance, construct victims as representatives of a hostile category, frame violence as political communication, and present participation as sacrifice for a higher cause. Organised criminal violence, by contrast, is more commonly associated with material benefit, market governance, reputation, and organisational survival, although mixed motives and political entanglements complicate this distinction. The article concludes that criminological theories can explain important behavioural mechanisms in both forms of violence, but must be integrated with political and terrorism studies to explain ideology, conflict, strategic communication, and state action. It recommends matched empirical comparisons of organised-crime and terrorist offenders to test the proposed mechanisms.