Establishing a joint agency response to the threat of lone-actor grievance-fuelled violence

Pathé, Michele; Haworth, Debbie J.; Goodwin, Terri-Ann; Holman, Amanda G.; Amos, Stephen J.; Winterbourne, Paul; Day, Leanne

doi:10.1080/14789949.2017.1335762

Cited by 29 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…50 The possible mechanisms through which mental illness may be linked to lone actor terrorism are various. 51 Some mentally disordered people may be susceptible to ideological influences as a result of chronic stress, disenfranchisement, and social isolation. 52 Radical political or religious ideologies may resonate with this group, or tap into their delusional beliefs, so rendering them at risk of indoctrination or radicalization, and more sensitive to the contagion effects of well-publicized lone-actor violence.…”

Section: Lone Actors and Grievance-fuelled Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Australia, the Queensland FTAC expanded its role to incorporate the assessment of cases potentially mentally ill and thought to be at risk of lone actor violence or grievance-fueled violence and the Victorian service from inception has incorporated this group. 51 All the Australian FTACs except the Canberra unit have now extended their scope beyond fixation to grievance-fueled violence in general. With FTAC involvement, counterterrorism investigations are generally not suspended.…”

Section: Lone Actors and Grievance-fuelled Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As to research findings from FTACs involved in wider lone-actor cases, only one small series is available in the public domain. 51 Security concerns take time to overcome in the publishing of results in this area.…”

Section: Lone Actors and Grievance-fuelled Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Fixated Threat Assessment Centers: preventing harm and facilitating care in public figure threat cases and those thought to be at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence

2020

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The rediscovery of the importance of mental illness in the risk assessment and management of those who threaten, approach, and harm public figures has led to a new way of dealing with those that threaten public figures. This approach emphasises the role of “fixation” which may be defined as an intense preoccupation pursued to an abnormally intense degree. It integrates a threat assessment paradigm with the literature on stalking. The need for such an approach was highlighted in research on the prevalence of harassment of public figures. Psychiatry has a key role in this approach which sees mental health clinicians and Police work together in Fixated Threat Assessment Centres (FTACs). An FTAC functions by assessing the level of concern and sharing information to facilitate interventions that are often mental health based. The purpose is not the hopeless task of identifying those who will go on to perpetrate serious violence, rather to intervene in the group they emerge from, to prevent harm. As well as decreasing risk to the persons fixated upon, this approach improves care to the mentally disordered people who harass and threaten them and, in doing so, decreases the likelihood of their criminalization while enhancing their quality of life. As expertise in the area has grown, policing and security agencies in several countries have expanded the FTAC model to cover individuals thought at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence, a term that captures both different forms of mass killing and lone actor terrorism.

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Section: Lone Actors and Grievance-fuelled Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lone Actors and Grievance-fuelled Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Fixated Threat Assessment Centers: preventing harm and facilitating care in public figure threat cases and those thought to be at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence

2020

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“…Therefore, multiagency intelligence sharing, across sectors and including community‐level actors, will be essential to succefully operationalize these findings. Intelligence hubs such as the fusion centers in the United States, the Integrated Security Units (ISUs), and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) in Canada, as well as the safeguarding hubs that operate as part of the United Kingdom's PREVENT strategy, are central to such endeavors (Home Office, ; Monahan & Walby, ; Pathé et al., ). In a review of information sharing among U.S. law enforcement, government agencies, and private‐sector organizations, however, Carter () found room for improvement.…”

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, several collaborative police–mental‐health models that are designed to address the mental health facet of violent extremism exist. These include the previously described PREVENT strategy, the Netherlands National Police Threat Management Team, and the Queensland Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (QFTAC), modeled on the United Kingdom's Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC; Pathé et al., ).…”

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing person‐exposure patterns in lone‐actor terrorism

Clemmow

Marchment

Gill

2019

Criminology & Public Policy

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Research Summary:The lone-actor terrorist population can be extremely heterogeneous and difficult to detect. Intelligence is vital to countering this threat. We devise a typology of person-exposure patterns (PEPs) that could serve as a framework for intelligence gathering and threat assessment. We use cluster analysis and a risk analysis framework (RAF) to identify relations among three components: propensity, situation, and network.The results of the analysis reveal four PEPs: solitary, susceptible, situational, and selection. The solitary PEP lacks common indicators of a propensity to pursue terrorist action. The susceptible PEP reveals cognitive susceptibility, manifesting as mental illness, to be a key factor in the emergence of a terrorist propensity. The situational PEP demonstrates how situational stressors may act as warnings of acceleration toward violent action. Lastly, the selection PEP demonstrates higher frequencies of leakage and antecedent violent behaviors.Policy Implications: Our findings have two key policy implications. First, given the multifinality of terrorism risk indicators, we suggest a move toward a structuredprofessional judgement approach to the risk analysis of lone-actor terrorists. Second, we present the PEP typology as a framework for intelligence gathering. Existing frameworks are predominantly focused on mobilization 452 CLEMMOW ET AL.indicators. We suggest expanding data collection to include propensity and situational indicators, as operationalized here, and using the PEP typology to inform decisions about the emergence of the motivation to commit an attack. To do so, it is necessary to pursue a multiagency approach to intelligence gathering.

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Risk of What and Why? Disaggregating Pathways to Extremist Behaviours in Individuals Susceptible to Violent Extremism

Clemmow,

Fowler,

Seaward

et al. 2024

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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Best practice in violent extremist risk assessment and management recommends adopting a Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) approach. The SPJ approach identifies relevant, evidence‐based risk and protective factors and requires experts to articulate hypotheses about a) what the person might do (risk of what), and b) how they've come to engage in the concerning behaviour (and why) (Logan 2021) to inform who, needs to do what, and when. Whilst the field continues to move towards adopting an SPJ approach, there remains a gap between what is known empirically and what is needed in practice. We apply psychometric network modelling to a sample of 485 individuals entered into Channel, the UK's preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) program. We model the system of interactions from which susceptibility to violent extremism emerges, providing data driven evidence which speaks to risk of what and why. Our research highlights a way to generate evidence which captures the multifactorial nature of susceptibility to violent extremism, to support professional decision making in the context of an SPJ approach.

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Establishing a joint agency response to the threat of lone-actor grievance-fuelled violence

Cited by 29 publications

References 15 publications

Fixated Threat Assessment Centers: preventing harm and facilitating care in public figure threat cases and those thought to be at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence

Fixated Threat Assessment Centers: preventing harm and facilitating care in public figure threat cases and those thought to be at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence

Analyzing person‐exposure patterns in lone‐actor terrorism

Risk of What and Why? Disaggregating Pathways to Extremist Behaviours in Individuals Susceptible to Violent Extremism

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