Threat Assessment

A Risk Management Approach

James T Turner, Michael Gelles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780789016270
• eBook ISBN: 9781135790912
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Detailed how to's of threat assessmentfrom the initial contact to the sharing of results!

Risk management can be an organizational nightmare, but it is an essential part of your operations. Recent events have shown us that organizations need to know how to respond swiftly and effectively in emergencies and that companies need to protect their employees from internal and external threats. This book provides you with the tools you need to protect both your employees and yourself from a variety of threats.

Threat Assessment: A Risk Management Approach examines the factors that human resource, security, legal, and behavioral professionals need to understand in work violence and threat situations that disrupt the working environment, revealing the best ways to reduce risk and manage emergencies. It includes case studies and hypothetical examples that show recommended practices in action and provides detailed interviewing methods that can increase the efficiency of current strategies. Helpful appendices provide sample forms for identification cards, stay-away letters, workplace behavior improvement plans for problem employees, questions for health care providers, and announcements for employees regarding security changes. An extensive bibliography points the way to other useful material on this subject.

Threat Assessment: A Risk Management Approach explores:

• the role of the multidisciplinary threat management team
• corporate liaisons with law enforcement agencies
• cyberthreats and stalking
• insider threats
• category classification of offending behaviors

Risk management is a constantly evolving field, and Threat Assessment provides you with access to the latest updates. Staying up-to-date on risk management innovations will help you increase corporate sensitivity to possible threats and provide the safest possible working environment to your employees.

The authors of Threat Assessment are seasoned professionals with extensive experience in risk management. You can learn from their expertise and adapt it to your situation, improving workplace safety and contributing to security in your own community.

Chapter 1

Threat Management: Organizational Challenge

Threat assessment in organizational settings represents a unique set of challenges that require the merging of elements from behavioral sciences, labor law, law enforcement, and human resources. The purpose of developing such a model in an organizational setting is to guide the actions of management in responding to these situations in the workplace.

Management’s goal is to provide the safest possible workplace while continuing the ability of the organization to sustain its mission. The objective of a risk management approach is to blend these areas of expertise into a plan that contains two core elements: (1) ongoing threat assessment, and (2) threat control action, threat management, and risk control.

In the case of truly random events, these actions may be futile in stopping an untoward event from happening. However, these types of events are relatively rare. The events that impact the functioning of organizations are often the result of a process that unfolds across time in a variety of settings and situations. These events can be confronted and responded to in an organized fashion. In doing so, organizations can manage risk to themselves, to others who work in the organization, and to their various stakeholders.

Threat assessment in organizations is more than focusing on overt acts of violence. It focuses on a variety of behaviors, actions, and/or statements that create intimidation and emotional distress in others, whether intended or not. These incidents are of concern to the organization because of their impact on the basic ability of the organization to deliver its legitimate set of services or the production of goods. The organization, in developing a risk management approach to threats, needs to consider the necessity of responding in a manner that allows employees and organizations to continue with their lives and daily routines. The response, or lack thereof, concerns not only safety but also the economic and service well-being of the organization.

As we have seen with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the impact of terror was not only on the direct targets. The collateral damage was inflicted on persons physically distant from the incident who watched or heard about what was happening. A second set of collateral impacts occurred to the economy of the nation brought on by uncertainty and fear. A primary goal of the administration in the early hours and days following the incident was to allay fear and emotional distress by giving a structured response to the national threat as well as by focusing on restarting economic activity. Each time an organization is faced with a potential threat or action, the leaders need to address the same issues on a smaller scale. By having a process in which employees have confidence, an organization reduces the ripple effect of such incidents. Failure to approach such incidents in a focused and organized manner, as we have seen repeatedly throughout corporate America, can worsen the situation. This poor response increases the risk to individuals while it creates distracting and costly legal problems for the organization.

The threat assessment approach views threats and overt acts of violence as occurring within a process or framework of variables that need to be understood and, where possible, managed. These situations can be highly fluid, with old information that is newly revealed, and new information and ongoing action by employees and managers that changes the overall assessment. Situations involving threat behavior or communications are not just “dangerous” or “not dangerous” but create for many employees emotional distress that is unacceptable and intolerable. These situations may progress over time from being perceived as benign to a potential for violence and physical harm. The goal of risk management is to reduce and contain the likelihood of not only physical violence but also intimidation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. The threat assessment process is key to monitoring change or movement in a situation and the likelihood of increased or decreased risk for violence.

This emphasis on the risk management of threat moves away from older ideas of the prediction of danger toward the identification and management of a variety of communications, behaviors, and actions, as a way to reduce, contain, and manage the impact of such actions in the workplace. The process of threat assessment needs to reduce and contain the risk of inflaming the situation. This requires that management consider a range of actions from a variety of disciplines—labor law, law enforcement, human resources, management, security, and health care.

Heilbrun (1997) delineates the differences between prediction-based approaches and management-oriented approaches in conducting a risk assessment. The risk factors in violence prediction are static, individual-based variables, chosen to maximize predictions of the probability of a specific type of action occurring. In the management approach the risk factors are dynamic, related to the risk, and are chosen to be ones that can be impacted by intervention.

The risk management of threat behaviors has two intertwined primary components that we shall examine more closely: (1) a threat assessment process that is ongoing, and (2) risk control actions that are intended to manage the threat and contain/reduce the level of threat. If the actions in threat control are effective, the assessment process should reflect this and the threat assessment process should reflect changes in communications and behavior originally identified as creating emotional distress. Thus, the threat is assessed while it is managed.

In organizational environments, the ability to maintain focus on a single issue over a prolonged time period of even a few days is difficult. It is easy for the threat control steps to get lost, be overlooked, or not completed. This inaction or confusion can actually increase the risk and decrease the confidence of individuals in the organization in the threat response process. One of the key roles of those in threat assessment is to maintain the continuity of the process and to keep bringing the organization back to completion of those actions determined as necessary to manage and control the threat situation.

The goal of threat assessment is to move away from the prediction of danger or the imminence of violence toward the identification and management of risk. The model of action moves from a single individual making judgments on some set of empirical measures to that of a range of actions reviewed by professionals from a spectrum of expertise—labor law, human resources, security, management, and threat specialist. The ability to quickly assemble a team, develop a response structure, consider a variety of rapidly evolving pieces of in formation, structure a flexible action plan, and adapt that plan when information changes is needed by a threat management team. The multidisciplinary team needs to learn how to carry out designated acts within a limited time frame, and then regroup to assess the impact of those actions. This ability to assimilate and act on information is required to properly use the threat assessment and to initiate and maintain a response plan.

Threat assessment in this model requires several components, including a simple, straightforward manner of talking about risk that directs the organization into a structured response. Through the 9/11 tragedy we have learned that in times of emotional distress, leaders must respond rapidly, effectively, and with sensitivity, not only for those directly involved but also for other members of the community. The organization’s leaders need to communicate to its members a sense of a steady hand on the wheel, a sense of knowledge and organization, and a sense of being able to move the organization in a direction to address the challenge. This is accomplished through corporate leaders who provide clear and concise information that creates the most realistic sense of safety and security. Without such a perception fear, panic, rumor, and inappropriate responses can lead to an atmosphere and actions that increase risk, enhance the likelihood of a negative outcome, disrupt ongoing operations, and increase emotional distress.

The goal then is to develop an approach to threat assessment that focuses on information that is legally available in the organizational setting and that incorporates ongoing reports of information as situations change. Management’s response should focus on a highly targeted action, directed at the situation that is generating concern or distress. The response should include an overarching concern that lives may be at stake.

This approach emphasizes that we are looking at situations rather than just at an individual. The context and matrix of variables within which behavior, action, and communication occurs is the framework for risk management. In some cases, the alleged source of the problematic behavior may be unknown or the initial information unclear. Initial reports often provide a conflicting picture, with multiple players providing information that may have been known in the organization but never revealed. The catalyst is this new level of concern that causes management and co-workers to rethink their appraisal of past behavior and comments sometimes several years old and spanning multiple interactions.

Although this risk management approach shares many characteristics with the targeted violence approach (Fein, Vossekuil, and Holden, 1995; Fein and Vossekuil, 1998; Borum et al., 1999), some differences exist because of the nature of threat assessment in organizations. In organizations, the individual may be a part of the system, which creates a different framework of legal and human resources issues that influence the process of threat assessment. Also, the threats may constitute a wider range of concerns such as behavior that impairs the ability of co-workers to perform their legitimate job functions as a result of fear, intimidation, or loss of confidence in the ability of the organization to address issues related to their safety.

A number of principles as noted by Fein and Vossekuil (1998), anchor the development of a threat response model. Four of those are key to the risk management of threat in an organizational setting.

1.  Threat behavior is the result of a process, not a random event. Different from targeted violence, there may be times when impulsive behavior(s) leads to the perception by others that a threat exists.

2.  Threat behavior or the perception of threat occurs within a framework of behavior and circumstances that need to be reviewed and managed so as to reduce risk.

3.  Review processes need to focus on making ongoing judgments as to the degree of risk that exists and what factors the organization needs to address in what order. This allows management to identify how these factors can be addressed with the resources that are available and what, if any, resources are needed from outside the organization.

4.  Management plans need to be developed to direct the actions of individuals impacted by the situation, as well as communication strategies that conform to human resource concerns, organizational rules and policies, and state and federal statutes.

The skills necessary to manage these kinds of situations are often foreign to the organization. The need for rapid responses with limited information from multiple sources that may change over time often overwhelms the system’s ability to cope and provokes a poorly considered, impulsive action by representatives of the organization that creates more risk and/or legal problems. Leaders need to put aside a “what we can’t do” mentality and focus on the best solutions for managing risk, even when no perfect or optimal solutions exist. Systems are also taxed by the need to carry out the multiple response options in close sequence with a deadline looming.

It is 2:55 p.m. Within the last ten minutes one co-worker has come forward and said that last night John talked twice about being angry with his next two level managers and about going to buy an AK-47. John is due at work at 3:25 p.m. What should be done now?

A THREAT REVIEW TEAM

Because of the challenges outlined previously, organizations need a group of individuals who understand the process of threat assessment and who have experience in managing information, developing information sources, and using the expertise of threat assessment professions. A core team needs to consist of personnel from management, human resources, and security (internal/external), and people with expertise in labor law and threat assessment need to be available. The individuals chosen from each of these areas need to understand threat assessment and the interaction of this process with the different disciplines. Many general counsels provide an excellent sense of general law and a unique understanding of the organization dynamics; however, they may not have the specialized labor law expertise to provide advice on specific actions. Many mental health professionals have excellent knowledge of human behavior but little actual experience or knowledge of the specifics of threat situations and how these situations interface with other systems. Such can be said for each discipline, so it is important either to select individuals with specialized knowledge or to provide the opportunity for individuals within the organization to gain that knowledge. Such a team, in addition to having a good knowledge of the organization, may need knowledge specific to the industry (for example, nuclear extortion threats, celebrity stalking, and financial fraud). Identified experts who can provide input and updates quickly are also necessary.

The role of threat assessors requires a different set of skills from those required for other types of investigations and clinical/forensic settings (Fein, Vossekuil, and Holden, 1995). Actuarial methods that may be used with other populations (Monahan and Steadman, 1994) and to assess violence and mental disorders (Quinsey et al., 1998) are often not appropriate for populations in organizations.

The use of so-called profiles is extremely limited as they are often overly inclusive. A large number of individuals would fit the profile providing little useful differentiation. In our experience profiles lull people into ignoring or failing to respond to actions or comments by individuals who fall outside the profiles. Profiles disrupt and inhibit the assessment process. Threatening behavior or comments are the domain of no one type of individual. Again we emphasize that the context in which these actions or communications occur, rather than a set of characteristics specific to an individual within the context of the organization, is crucial to understanding and taking proper action. In threat assessment and risk control one seeks the commonalities in the process and the unique matrix of factors that are driving this particular problem.

For organizations striving to create a focused response to threat, a series of steps need to occur that allow them to develop an understanding of the context in which the communications or actions occur, to identify risk factors that may be influenced by some action, and to monitor the impact of ongoing intervention. To accomplish this an organization needs to develop:

•  A team with specific skills

•  A system for responding to the initial threat review process

•  A shared model for conceptualizing these situations

•  A set of actions that direct the management of risk factors

Chapter 2

Workplace Violence: An Overview

The phenomenon of violence has continued to receive increasing attention in our society. Such incidents have resulted in numerous legislative changes in the areas of harassment, terrorist threats, stalking, workplace violence, and domestic violence. Behavior that several years ago may have reflected poor judgment and aberrant conduct, today may be illegal and prosecutable. From the perspective of adjudication, behaviors that had been considered personal conflict may now be considered criminal.

Violence is best defined as a process. It is not an acute or episodic event, but rather an action resulting from a culmination of a series of failures, disappointments, and problems (Fein, Vossekuil, and Holden, 1995). The result can be an expressive, destructive, volatile behavioral outburst with the potential for grave consequences. Violent acts are the result of a process that can follow a patterned continuum. People who make verbal threats do not always pose actual physical threats (Fein and Vossekuil, 1998; Fein, Vossekuil, and Holden, 1995). The continuum starts with ideas and ends in action. Other individuals may move along the continuum from having such ideas to expressing them and then to engaging in behavior that rapidly becomes a problem. For those who tend to overtly express their anger and frustration, violence can be perceived as a solution to their problems.

Although there is no particular profile of these individuals, a sequence of identifiable behaviors illustrates this continuum (Fein and Vossekuil, 1998): Af...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Threat Management: Organizational Challenge
• Chapter 2. Workplace Violence: An Overview
• Chapter 3. Organizational Response Options
• Chapter 4. Intake Process
• Chapter 5. Category Classification
• Chapter 6. Threat Management: Interviewing Strategies
• Chapter 7. Liaison with Law Enforcement
• Chapter 8. Analysis of Threats
• Chapter 9. Threat Assessment Feedback for Management
• Chapter 10. Stalking As a Contemporary Crime in the Workplace
• Chapter 11. Cyberthreats
• Chapter 12. Insider Threat: Risk Management Consideration
• Chapter 13. Executive Vulnerability
• Appendix A. Threat Information Card for Potential Victims
• Appendix B. Stay Away Letter
• Appendix C. Behavior Improvement Plan
• Appendix D. Health Provider Questions
• Appendix E. Announcement to Employees Regarding Security Changes
• Bibliography
• Index