Extreme online violence may be linked to rise of ‘0 to 100’ killers, experts say
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Criminal justice specialists call for new approach to identify emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions

Jonathan Hall, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said there was a “new threat cohort” combining terrorists who were radicalised online and those who had “gone down a rabbit hole and into a dark world”.

“We have to be stark about this – this behaviour couldn’t have existed without the internet because it is the source of the idea that certain types of violence are the solution.”

Hall is writing a report for the Home Office that was commissioned after the Southport attack, looking at whether to treat mass-casualty attack planning as terrorism.

He disagreed with stretching the definition of terrorism, but added: “The question is what lessons can you learn from the management of one cohort to apply to the other.”

David Wilson, an emeritus professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, said research into whether online violence led to violence in real life was an “emerging field”.

Although earlier research challenged previous generations’ moral panic over violence in video games and films, Wilson thought that social media was different because it was more absorbing, was consumed alone, and algorithms led people to content that became “more and more extreme”.

Wilson said that for the past five years he had asked 300 first-year criminology students to raise their hand if they had watched a beheading video online. “All of them have,” he said, adding that this prevalence was reflected in an increase in these crimes.

He observed the rise of “0 to 100” killers, who diverged from the norm of offences escalating gradually and instead moved straight to murder. This was connected to the rise of “mixed ideology” motives, which included “incel” culture, the “alt-right” and mass-killing manifestos. The problem was compounded by cuts to youth clubs and mental health provision, he said.

Greg Stewart, a criminal lawyer and former youth justice lead for the Law Society, said successful reforms to the youth justice system picked up youngsters behaving badly in communities but missed “exceptional children”.

“The escalator, which was the old way of looking at things, has been disabled, so you’re more likely to go from a low base to very high seriousness,” he said, adding that there was an overlap between autism, obsessive behaviour and becoming radicalised online.

He recommended a Prevent-style response, in which teachers and lecturers picked up “thinking patterns and views”. For example, Nasen Saadi, , alarmed a lecturer by asking questions about murder.

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