No abstract

In the wake of recent school shootings, fear over violence in schools has prompted increased requests for psychologists, educators, and law enforcement professionals to assist in preventing future school violence incidents. We attempt to lay a foundation for developing effective assessment and prevention approaches by first distinguishing planned school-based attacks from other forms of school and youth violence. We then review the three assessment approaches that have been advocated and used in some jurisdictions (profiling, guided professional judgment, automated decision-making) and demonstrate why they are inappropriate-and potentially harmful-in preventing planned school-based attacks. We then describe the contours of the threat assessment approach, developed by the U.S. Secret Service to prevent assassinations, and examine its utility for responding to communications or behaviors of concern that students may present in school settings.

In the context of a mock jury study, we tested the hypothesis that people's interpretations of ambiguous evidence depend on how (i.e., by whom) that evidence is introduced. Subjects watched a 45-rain interrogation of a murder suspect who emphatically asserted her innocence but told an imperfect story. Before the tape, subjects read either the prosecution or defense lawyer's arguments concerning the suspect's interrogation performance; after the tape, they read counter-arguments from the opposing side. Results indicated that subjects high in the need for cognition (NC) were influenced more by arguments that preceded the evidence, whereas low-NC subjects were more influenced by arguments that followed the evidence. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. * We are indebted to the late Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola and to Assistant District Attorney Scan Walsh for generously providing us with the interrogation tape used in this study.

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.

Attacks against judicial officials and the courts are rare events but carry the potential for tremendous impact on the American judiciary. In this article, the authors describe a systematic approach to prevent targeted violence against judges and their courts. They begin with a brief overview of findings from operational research on assassinations and attacks against public officials, including judges. They then review the threat assessment approach, a factbased risk assessment method developed to prevent assassinations, and examine its utility for evaluating risk of targeted violence toward judges and courts. The authors conclude with a discussion of research recommendations to better understand and prevent targeted violence in the judiciary at CALIFORNIA INST OF TECHNOLOGY on June 20, 2015 ann.sagepub.com Downloaded from 79 A SSASSINATIONS and attacks on federal and state judges, like attacks on political leaders and other public figures, are rare but troubling events. Since 1949, in the United States, there have been three known assassinations of federal judges and one attack. In that same time period,there have also been four attacks on U.S. presidents (one resulting in death), two attacks on presidential candidates, two attacks on members of Congress, several assassinations of national political leaders, a number of attacks on state and local elected officials, and more than two dozen instances in which planned attacks on public officials were intercepted before the attacker came within lethal range of his or her target Vossekuil 1998, 1999).Although threats made to judicial officials are not uncommon (number of assassinations and attacks on state and local judges, the number of nonlethal attacks on federal judges, and the number of attacks on other federal and state court personnel who are targeted by virtue of their association with the courts are not regularly and systematically documented. Nevertheless, these judicial murders and attacks, like assassinations and attacks on political figures, are all incidents of targeted violence-incidents where an identified (or identifiable) target is selected by the perpetrator prior to the attack (Borum et al. 1999; Reddy et al. in press).