Terrorism is violent acts usually aimed at achieving specific political gains. Terrorism is a global issue affecting nations. The terrorists have batter training and receive support from states that have interests. The nature of violence that terrorism has is great and usually causes a lot of destruction when they strike. The people involved in terrorism believe in doing the terrorism acts and they are willing to lose their lives to accomplish their mission. The criminal acts are ones that people who take opportunistic targets and they have little support. They do not have discipline and are selfish (Grabosky & Stohl, 2010). Deterrence of criminals is easy because they do not possess adequate training and sometimes lack powerful weapons.
The criminals hide after they do a crime but the terrorists like to have credit and often use the media to propel propaganda. The criminal operate near their hideouts and operate within their states whereas the terrorists operate in the entire country and most of them operate in different parts of the world and they have their hideouts in different geographic locations.
Street crimes often involve corruption, robbery, rape, theft, burglary and killing. Street crime is a behavior that is socially unacceptable because it disturbs the society cohesion. Terrorism involves use of strong weapons like bombs and grenades to kill. They also like taking people hostage and ask for huge some of ransom.
Trying the criminals and terrorists in America is a challenge because the terrorists are hard to notice before they act. There is political pressure that purport that it is possible to stop the attacks. This leads to premature arrests and death of innocent people (Weinberg, 2009). This renders prosecution impossible and leaves the criminal groups and terrorists intact. It sometimes provokes disputes between nations. The law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies from the different nations may also conflict.
References
Grabosky, P. N., & Stohl, M. (2010). Crime and terrorism. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Weinberg, L. (2009). Global terrorism. New York: Rosen.
