No Place Like Home: The Role of Network Connectedness and Rational Choice in the Spatial Decision-Making of Violent Extremist Offenders
No Place Like Home: The Role of Network Connectedness and Rational Choice in the Spatial Decision-Making of Violent Extremist Offenders
John D. Colautti Ava Peters Neil D. Shortland AnaCristina Bedoya Emily Greene-Colozzi a Criminal Justice, Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts, USAb School of Criminology and Justice and Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts, USAJohn D. Colautti is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Anna Marria College. In 2017, John retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons with over 25 years of service. During his career, he was assigned to various duty stations, facility types, security levels, as well as managed both male and female offenders. He held various roles of increasing responsibility, including temporary acting responsibilities for executive level positions. For more than 15 years John held a collateral duty as Public Information Officer and was involved in several high-profile cases and media events. From 2013 to 2015, he played an instrumental role in the multi-agency federal management of the case involving Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.Ms. Ava Peters joined the School of Criminology and Justice Studies as a doctoral student in the fall of 2025. She earned her Master of Public Health degree from University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte with a concentration in health policy and community health practice. Her research focuses on advancing mental health equity for incarcerated and justice-involved populations through participatory methods, policy analysis, and applied program evaluation.Neil Shortland Ph.D., is a Professor in Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is the Director of the School of Criminology and Justice Studies, and the Modelling Individual and Networked Decisions (MIND) Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.AnaCristina Bedoya is a PhD student in Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She studies misogynist motivated violence.Emily Greene-Colozzi is an Assistant Professor in Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr. Greene-Colozzi’s research focusses on mass and extremist violence; school shootings; situational crime prevention; rational choice and decision-making; pathway to violence; open-source data collection.