Preventing Crimes with Advanced Threat and Risk Assessment Procedures

A law enforcement officer's initial reaction to a threat of violence is usually to immediately follow the lead and track down the perpetrator. However, while this method of thinking works on an individual basis, on a macro scale the process often falls apart. Simply stated, there are more threats than resources to follow them and far too many empty threats to respond to each one. The solution is a scientifically proven method of threat and risk assessment to help officers determine which threats to pursue. 

Every year, tens of thousands of people are brutally battered or murdered following a threat while officers were busy pursuing other threats that may or may not have come to fruition. After the deaths of US District Judge Joan Lefkow's mother and husband, officers were criticized for their lack of a solid threat and risk assessment plan. Without a proven method to assess and categorize the risk level of the numerous threats upon judges in 2005, Marshals pursued every lead with equal resources and were thus unable to respond the Lefkow case in time to prevent disaster. 

By mid year 2006, the Marshal Service had already received 882 reports of threats and inappropriate communications with judges - a figure quadruple that of ten years ago. If this is a problem for US Marshals who protect the nation's 2,200 federal judges, it's certainly a dilemma for the law enforcement officers responsible for protecting the nation's 300 million citizens. 

With smart threat and risk assessment processes, agencies are able to thwart more crimes and bring more dangerous criminals to justice without having to hire additional staff. Some of the methods used in FBI and Secret Service level threat and risk assessment are a deep understanding of criminal psychology, methods of interviewing those who are mentally disordered, indirect personality assessment, forensic linguistics, and forensic document analysis.

Threat and risk assessment is an essential element for police departments to make the shift from reactive to preventative. Not every crime comes with a warning, but many are preceded by threatening communications or stalking. Threat and risk assessment is just as critical for building security, safety processes, and computer systems.

Risks are often easy to identify in hindsight -- it's reverse engineering a crime to identify the risks that is difficult. Bona fide threat and risk assessment means adhering to an established set of processes. As our nation now knows, it is often the clues that don't seem outwardly alarming that lead to the most destruction. 

Retired agents like Roy Hazelwood of the FBI's famed behavioral science unit and J. Lawrence Cunningham of the Secret Service are now working to pass on their knowledge to local officers and businesses. For the first time in history, agencies that strive to increase their effectiveness have a unique opportunity to build safer local communities by learning from former FBI and Secret Service agents that literally wrote the book on criminal profiling and threat and risk assessment .