Threat assessment: defining an approach for evaluating risk of targeted violence.

Although the field of risk assessment has made tremendous advances in the past 20 years, assessments of targeted violence continue to pose a significant challenge to law enforcement, mental health, and other professionals. These specific and critical assessments require an innovative approach. The threat assessment model, developed and refined by the U.S. Secret Service, provides a useful framework for thinking about assessments of potential for targeted violence. In this paper, we attempt to define this approach as it has been developed by the Secret Service, and apply it within the existing professional/scientific literature on risk assessment. We begin with a brief review of existing models and approaches in risk assessment, and identification of some gaps in our existing knowledge as it relates to assessments of targeted violence. We then proceed with an outline of the threat assessment approach, including a review of principles and guiding operational questions, and discussion of its use in assessment of targeted violence.     

The role of warning behaviors in threat assessment: an exploration and suggested typology

The concept of warning behaviors offers an additional perspective in threat assessment. Warning behaviors are acts which constitute evidence of increasing or accelerating risk. They are acute, dynamic, and particularly toxic changes in patterns of behavior which may aid in structuring a professional's judgment that an individual of concern now poses a threat - whether the actual target has been identified or not. They require an operational response. A typology of eight warning behaviors for assessing the threat of intended violence is proposed: pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst, leakage, directly communicated threat, and last resort warning behaviors. Previous research on risk factors associated with such warning behaviors is reviewed, and examples of each warning behavior from various intended violence cases are presented, including public figure assassination, adolescent and adult mass murder, corporate celebrity stalking, and both domestic and foreign acts of terrorism. Practical applications and future research into warning behaviors are suggested.     

Assessing threats of violence: Professional skill or common sense?

When faced with threats of violence, it is of great importance to assess the risk for actual harm to occur. Over the last decades, this task has developed into a domain of its own and professionals have specialised in threat assessment . However, it is yet unknown whether professional experience affects the quality of threat assessments. The present study examined how threat assessment professionals (N  = 44), university students (N  = 44), and laypersons (N  = 45) assessed the risk for violence in three fictitious cases. The assessments (i.e., assigning risk values to different pieces of information) were found to be strikingly similar across the three groups. Yet, professionals agreed more with one another on their assessments, and professionals identified more relevant (empirically supported) threat cues when given the opportunity to request additional information. These results suggest that threat assessment professionals know better than nonprofessionals what information to look for, and hence, they may contribute most in the process of gathering information to clarify the threat. Such knowledge can help to optimise the use of expertise, which may improve the quality of threat assessments. The current findings can be of value to those who consult threat assessment professionals, as well as to the professionals themselves.     

The relationship of mental illness to targeted contact behavior toward state government agencies and officials

Research in the burgeoning field of threat assessment has illuminated the importance of mental illness factors when considering risk of targeted violence-particularly related to government agencies and officials. The authors analyzed 127 cases investigated by a state law enforcement agency regarding threatening or other contacts toward public officials or state agency employees prompting security intervention. Univariate and discriminant analysis indicated that mentally ill subjects were significantly more likely to engage in more contacts as well as to make specific demands during such contacts. Mentally ill subjects were also more likely to articulate help-seeking concerns and employ religious themes, as opposed to using insulting, degrading, or ominous language toward the target or issuing complaints regarding policy issues. Contrary to other research, the mentally ill subjects within this sample were not significantly more likely to engage in approach behavior, a threshold for higher risk of violence. Implications for threat assessment activity are discussed.     

A comparative analysis of North American adolescent and adult mass murderers

Thirty adult mass murderers and 34 adolescent mass murderers in North America are compared on both offender and offense variables to delineate similarities and differences. Findings indicate a plethora of psychiatric disturbances and odd/reclusive and acting-out personality traits. Predisposing factors include a fascination with weapons and war among many of the adolescents and the development of a "warrior mentality" in most of the adults. Precipitating factors indicate a major rejection or loss in the hours or days preceding the mass murder. Results are interpreted through the lens of threat assessment for targeted violence (Borum, Fein, Vossekuil, & Bergland 1999), recognizing that a fact-based, dynamic behavioral approach is most useful for mitigating risk of such an extremely low-base-rate violent crime.     

Calculus GPA and Math Identification as Moderators of Stereotype Threat in Highly Persistent Women

The present research tested whether the effect of stereotype threat on calculus performance was moderated by calculus GPA and math identification in advanced undergraduate women majoring in science, technology, and engineering (STEM) fields. Women (n = 102) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions—stereotype threat, gender equivalence, or no mention (of gender). Confirming stereotype threat theory, at high levels of calculus GPA and math identification, women performed the worst in the stereotype threat condition, intermediate in the gender equivalence condition, and best in the no mention condition. Strategies to counter the inimical effects of stereotype threat are discussed     

Violence against transgender people: A review of United States data

Transgender people face many challenges in a society that is unforgiving of any system of gender that is not binary. However, there are three primary sources of data in the United States for discerning the rates and types of violence that transgender people face throughout their lives — self-report surveys and needs assessments, hot-line call and social service records, and police reports. Data from each of these sources are discussed in length, as well as some of the methodological issues for these types of data sources. All three sources indicate that violence against transgender people starts early in life, that transgender people are at risk for multiple types and incidences of violence, and that this threat lasts throughout their lives. In addition, transgender people seem to have particularly high risk for sexual violence. Future research considerations, such as improving data collection efforts, are discussed.     

Integrating research and practice in federal law enforcement: Secret Service applications of behavioral science expertise to protect the President

This paper discusses specific behavioral research needs by law enforcement and justice systems to guide forensic decision-making in areas of targeted violence. Continuing incidents of stalking, workplace violence, and threats to public figures underscore the importance of developing empirically based risk assessment and intervention strategies. Reviewing briefly the relevant literatures in these areas, this paper describes deficits in these literatures and the absence of a model for integrating research and practice in applied settings. The U.S. Secret Service Behavioral Research Program is explored as one example of how behavioral science expertise may be integrated with law enforcement responsibilities. Considerations associated with building behavioral research capacities in applied settings are examined in the context of differences in professional orientation, values, and access to information. Specific research directions to improve understanding of targeted violence are recommended along with suggestions for ways in which the psychology-law field may facilitate integration of research into practice. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The concept of leakage in threat assessment

Leakage in the context of threat assessment is the communication to a third party of an intent to do harm to a target. Third parties are usually other people, but the means of communication vary, and include letters, diaries, journals, blogs, videos on the internet, emails, voice mails, and other social media forms of transmission. Leakage is a type of warning behavior that typically infers a preoccupation with the target, and may signal the research, planning, and implementation of an attack. Nomothetic data suggest that leakage occurs in a majority of cases of attacks on and assassinations of public figures, adult mass murders, adolescent mass murders, and school or campus shootings: very low-frequency, but catastrophic acts of intended and targeted violence. Idiographic or case data illustrate the various permutations of leakage. We discuss the operational importance of the concept, place it in the context of other warning behaviors, emphasize the need for further research, and outline risk management strategies for the mitigation of such acts of violence in both law enforcement and clinical mental health settings.     

Pacifism—Fifty Years Later

I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones. Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position is contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest. In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war. Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run.     

PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE

Abstract. Violence is in its broadest sense the deliberate creation of "bads" or negative goods as opposed to production, which is the deliberate creation of good. Its two major sources are malevolence and threat. Malevolence is the situation where A's perception that B is worse off increases A's welfare or utility. Threat systems are probably the largest source of violence. Four responses to threat are: compliance or submission: defiance: flight; and counter-threat, which is stable in the short run, but must eventually break down and is the major source of violence in the modern world.     

Psychotic symptoms and violence toward others — a literature review of some preliminary findings: Part 1. Delusions

The main scope of this paper is to delineate some findings from a review of the literature concerning the possible impact of delusions on violence toward others by psychiatric patients. According to this review, studies on a possible association between delusions and increased risk of violence are scarce, but steadily growing, and have shown some interesting results. However, since delusions are also common in nonviolent psychiatric patients, there is emerging evidence that our attention should be directed to specific hallmarks of delusions that indicate an increased risk of violence. Among the main findings of the present review are: the number of empirical studies were surprisingly low; about 80% of the studies were conducted during the last 8 years; and less than one third of the studies used a prospective design. Further findings were that persecutory delusions appear to increase risk of violence in some patients; co-occurence of persecutory delusions and emotional distress may increase risk of violence; and there is limited but tentative support to the existence of an association between symptoms of perceived threat and internal control override (TCO) and violence.     

Structural Predictors of Brazilian Police Violence

This article explores the nature of police violence in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area in contemporary Brazil during the last two decades of the twentieth century. First, the article reviews theories and empirical research within general sociology and by Brazilianist/Brazilian scholars on the nature of violence, and policing. Next, the article reviews three structural theories of police violence developed as part of Western sociology but applied to Brazil—the reaction-to-crime, the reaction-to-violence, and the threat models. Lastly, using occurrence data on reports of police excessive use of force (n = 4018) from the University of São Paulo Núcleo de Estudos de Violéncia (Center for the Study of Violence) database on Gross Human Rights Violations, these three theories are tested with time series regression techniques through the regression of municipality rates of police violence on crime rates, concentrations of Afro-Brazilians and rural state migrants, and poverty indicators. The findings offer no support for threat explanations. The findings do support a partial reaction-to-crime explanation for police violence with rates of assault and robbery having a positive relationship to rates of police violence. Rates of homicide were found to have a negative relationship, indicating that homicide may be addressed by official policing practices whereas police may react to robbery and assault with “unofficial” violence.     

The need for marital violence prevention efforts: A behavioral—cognitive secondary prevention program for engaged and newly married couples

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to review research indicating that prevention efforts are needed for marital violence; (b) to present the rationale for a prevention approach derived from a behavioral—cognitive, social learning perspective; and (c) to describe a new behavioral—cognitive secondary prevention program that we are developing for engaged and newly married couples at risk for marital violence. Given these goals, we first present data demonstrating that physical aggression is often introduced early in a relationship and is likely to continue without intervention. After reviewing questions about the efficacy of marital violence treatment programs, we propose that prevention is a potentially important means of reducing and eliminating relationship violence. We then review behavioral—cognitive models of marital violence and the empirical data supporting these models. Based upon this review, we introduce a new behavioral—cognitive program (PREP/SAVE) designed to prevent relationship violence. Finally, we briefly present our pilot work and planned research on the efficacy of PREP/SAVE, along with some issues for consideration by future researchers.     

Community Violence and Youth: Affect, Behavior, Substance Use, and Academics

Community violence is recognized as a major public health problem (WHO, World Report on Violence and Health, 2002) that Americans increasingly understand has adverse implications beyond inner-cities. However, the majority of research on chronic community violence exposure focuses on ethnic minority, impoverished, and/or crime-ridden communities while treatment and prevention focuses on the perpetrators of the violence, not on the youth who are its direct or indirect victims. School-based treatment and preventive interventions are needed for children at elevated risk for exposure to community violence. In preparation, a longitudinal, community epidemiological study, The Multiple Opportunities to Reach Excellence (MORE) Project, is being fielded to address some of the methodological weaknesses presented in previous studies. This study was designed to better understand the impact of children’s chronic exposure to community violence on their emotional, behavioral, substance use, and academic functioning with an overarching goal to identify malleable risk and protective factors which can be targeted in preventive and intervention programs. This paper describes the MORE Project, its conceptual underpinnings, goals, and methodology, as well as implications for treatment and preventive interventions and future research.     

Violence risk assessment in persons with mental illness

Mental health clinicians are often asked to determine an individual's risk of future violence. Dangerous assessments are required in a wide variety of situations that include involuntary commitments, emergency psychiatric evaluations, seclusion and restraint release decisions, inpatient care discharges, probation/parole decisions, death penalty evaluations, domestic violence interventions, fitness for duty evaluations, and after a threat is made. This article provides an overview regarding the assessment of dangerousness in both adults and juveniles and a summary of recent research regarding the relationship of mental illness to violence.     

Assessing violence risk in Tarasoff situations: a fact-based model of inquiry.

Although significant advances in risk assessment research and practice have been made in recent years, there has not been any analysis in the professional literature regarding how and whether the emerging practice recommendations apply in Tarasoff-type situations. We suggest that, when faced with a Tarasoff-type situation, the appraisal of risk should be guided by a method that is primarily fact-based and deductive, rather than by the more inductive risk assessment approach for general violence recidivism, which is guided primarily by base rates and historical risk factors. We review the principles underlying a fact-based, or threat assessment, approach and outline six areas of inquiry that can guide the appraisal of risk: A-attitudes that support or facilitate violence, C-capacity, T-thresholds crossed, I-intent, O-other's reactions, and N-noncompliance with risk reduction interventions.     

Violence and Selfhood

Is violence senseless or is it at the origin of sense? Does its destruction of meaning disclose ourselves as the origin of meaning? Or is it the case that it leaves in its wake only a barren field? Does it result in renewal or only in a sense of dead loss? To answer these questions, I shall look at James Dodd’s, Hegel’s, and Carl Schmitt’s accounts of the creative power of violence—particularly with regard to its ability to give individuals and groups their sense of self-identity. I shall also follow up on Peg Birmingham’s suggestion that Socrates’ defense at his trial points to an alternate source of our self-identity—one that is ultimately less barren.     

Alcohol‐related violence defined by ultimate goals: a qualitative analysis of the features of three different types of violence by intoxicated young male offenders

Based upon a functional approach to understanding aggression, we aimed to identify the occurrence of and to describe the features of three types of alcohol‐related violence defined a priori by ultimate goals: (1) violence in pursuit of nonsocial profit‐based goals, (2) violence in pursuit of social dominance goals, and (3) violence as defence in response to threat. A sample of 149 young men with offences of violence that were alcohol related was interviewed. Cases were classified and detailed information from the first ten cases in each class (N=30) was subjected to thematic analysis. Intoxicated violence in pursuit of nonsocial profit‐based goals was opportunistic and motivated by the desire for more alcohol or drugs. Violence, in these cases, although serious, appeared to be brief. Intoxicated violence in pursuit of social dominance goals was typically precipitated by past or current insult or injury, and was accompanied by strong anger and an adrenaline rush. Attacks were ferocious, and robbing the victim was not uncommon, perhaps to inflict additional humiliation. Feelings of pride and satisfaction were typical and expressions of remorse were uncommon. Regarding intoxicated violence as defence in response to threat, attacks were often expected, and in some cases the respondent made a pre‐emptive strike. Weapon use was common in this group. Fear was experienced, but so too was anger. Feelings of excitement were not reported and remorse was common. Further validation of these types is warranted, and the potential implications of these findings for prevention and treatment are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 36:67–79, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Community and Civil Strife

ABSTRACT What kind of threat does terrorism pose to a community? Two models of terrorism are introduced. The Unjust War model views terrorism as an attack on the innocent, but thereby misidentifies its criminal character. The Political Crime model regards it as violence for political ends, by-passing democratic channels. This misconstrues the terrorist's aim of waging war against a state whose legitimacy he contests. Associated with the models of terrorism are two conceptions of community, the Communitarian and the Hobbesian, respectively. While the Communitarian conception sees the community as independent of the state, the Hobbesian identifies them, thus assimilating an attack on the state to a threat to the community. The Hobbesian conception, however, even when amplified by democratic theory, provides inadequate resources to rebut a challenge to the state's legitimacy, in particular one concerning territorial boundaries. Arguments for permitting secession are discussed. The Communitarian conception may be able to ground legitimacy claims; but it may also justify some terrorist campaigns as needed to preserve communities.