This review focuses on terrorism and extremist crimes, including ideologically motivated hate crimes. Research on these topics has become more rigorous in recent decades, and more scholars have engaged in original data collection. Our assessment found a burgeoning literature that increasingly includes the application of integrated theories, but gaps remain as few studies examine life-course and critical approaches. Our review of the policing of terrorism found a limited evidence base for counterterrorism initiatives. We also found that court/sentencing issues are understudied. We suggest improving data quality in these areas by creating a national data collection protocol on these crimes, enhancing the rigor of offender and victim self-report studies, and requiring more transparency from open-source research efforts. We propose that government agencies fund rigorous evaluations of policing strategies in the terrorism context. Finally, it is hoped that increased access to federal court documents will lead to more scholarly attention on sentencing issues. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7 is January 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Crime analysis involves the use of data to study crime-related problems. This includes identifying spatial and temporal patterns of crime events, understanding the characteristics of crime scenes, and identifying high-risk victims and offenders. Work products of crime analysts provide police the ability to understand the nature of crime problems in their jurisdiction. This information is then used to develop crime prevention interventions. Crime analysis is a requirement of the types of proactive, focused, problem-solving activities that work best in policing. Crime analysis can be categorized into four broad types: crime intelligence analysis, tactical crime analysis, strategic crime analysis, and administrative crime analysis. Crime mapping has become an important skill that cuts across the different crime analysis types and informs many activities of modern police agencies. The crime analysis profession has increased in size and scope over the early 21st century. However, some core components of crime analysis have existed in policing as far back as the mid-1800s in Great Britain and the early 1900s in the United States. The evidence-based policing movement—which advocates for policy solutions to be based on scientific evidence about what works best in preventing crime—presents opportunities for further advancement of the crime analysis profession. Barriers to maximizing the benefits of crime analysis relate to inconsistent training standards, reliance on outdated models of policing, and a lack of clarity regarding roles and agency standing for crime analysts. An increased commitment to applied research efforts may help navigate these barriers in the future.