NCJ Number
241865
Date Published
2000
Length
52 pages
Annotation
This monograph presents a systematic procedure for threat assessment and intervention regarding a school shooter.
Abstract
It is intended to assist educators, mental health professionals, and law enforcement agencies in developing their own policies and procedures for dealing with threats or violent acts in schools. Threat-assessment standards are outlined in order to provide a framework for evaluating a spoken, written, and symbolic threat. This is combined with a four-pronged assessment approach in providing a logical, methodical process for examining the risk that a threat will be implemented. The threat assessment model emerged from the concepts and principles developed by the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) based on nearly 25 years of experience in threat assessment, ideas generated at a 1999 NCAVC symposium on school shootings, and an in-depth review of 18 school-shooting cases. One chapter of the monograph discusses the following topics: the nature of a threat, motivation for carrying out a threat, "signposts," types of threats, factors in threat assessment, and levels of risk. The four-pronged assessment model consists of the personality of the student, family dynamics, school dynamics, and social dynamics. Threats are classified as low-level, medium-level, and high-level. Appended methodology, use of case reviews at the symposium, suggested readings, and proposals