‘How could our society have let this happen?’ The idea of the preventability of terrorist attacks and its consequences

Evaluation reports after terrorist attacks provide a rich source for analysing current and evolving understandings of the preventability of crime in general, and of terrorist attacks in particular. This article examines how preventability is framed in evaluation reports following terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011, 2019 and 2022. Drawing on framing analysis and scholarship on sense-making after crises, I analyse how the reports frame the question of preventability and distribute accountability and responsibility. I show, first, that all three inquiries are guided by mandates that blend inquisitorial and accusatorial questions, and that the 2011 commission in particular starts from a strongly normative premise that the attacks could and should have been prevented. By focusing primarily on police and security service performance and intelligence “failures”, the reports downplay the complexity of decision-making under conditions of pervasive uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. I argue that the reports both reflect and reinforce a belief in the retrospective predictability and preventability of terrorist attacks, thereby legitimising expanded security powers while obscuring the consequences for those falsely identified as future terrorists. The result is an underestimation of the cost of preventive measures.