Terrorist offenders often face great stigma, with an increased perceived risk judgement and lesser acceptance, creating barriers to reintegration within the community. The media often portrays specific offender characteristics, with an overrepresentation of ethnicity and ideology particularly, South-Asian ethnicity and Isla mist ideology influencing public perceptions. Despite this, there is a paucity of information which investigates how the provision of risk assessment information (RAI) may influence public perceptions towards ex-terrorist offenders. The current study aimed to gain a better understanding of how the provision of RAI interacts with offender characteristics, specifically ethnicity and ideology, and influences perceived risk and acceptance of ex-terrorist offenders in daily situations. Therefore, 12 hypothetical vignettes were factor constructed across 3 levels comprising, ethnicity (White, Black, South-Asian), ideology (Isla mist, Far-right) and risk assessment (present, absent). 213 participants read a randomised hypothetical terrorist offence and completed various questions. These included demographic and media questions, a risk judgement questionnaire and a social distancing questionnaire. The risk judgement questionnaire measured the perceived risk towards reoffending, reintegration, parole, monitoring and risk of the terrorist offender, whilst the social distancing questionnaire measured acceptance in day-to-day scenarios including, housing, relationships, employment and daily activities. Results revealed a significant main effect of RAI for the perceived risk judgement variables: perceived risk, perceived reoffending likelihood and comfort towards reintegration of the ex-terrorist offender. Results also revealed that RAI was a significant predictor of acceptance within, housing, relationships and general activities (control measure). However, offender characteristics were not statistically significant for either risk judgement or acceptance measures. This study highlights the importance of RAI for both perceived risk judgement and acceptance towards ex-terrorist offenders within the community and thus, more research is necessary to further identify the role of RAI on public perceptions. Moreover, the study highlighted the lack of influence for ethnicity and ideology on perceived risk judgement and social distancing, therefore this undermines previous research which highlights its significance and the overrepresentation for media portrayal of such offender characteristics. The limitations of this research are discussed.
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