Threats at Event Spaces in the United States: Comparing and Contrasting Completed Versus Failed or Foiled Plots

Violent incidents at public event spaces, such as the January 1st attack in New Orleans, highlight security challenges and consequences of failure. Yet, failed or foiled plots provide insights into pre-incident intervention often missing from analyses of completed attacks. Because research has rarely compared these outcomes, we examine how completed versus failed or foiled attacks differ along event, incident, and attacker characteristics. Drawing on 42 U.S. plots targeting public event spaces from 1970 to 2024, we use situational crime prevention (SCP) and behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) frameworks to respectively inform physical security strategies and community-based violence prevention efforts.