Chapter Three: Threat Assessment
What is a threat assessment and when is it appropriate?
When an employer, co-worker, teacher, family member, or friend identifies someone who is in crisis, how should we respond? It’s a critical question, and the wrong answer can have tragic consequences. Allowing a student or employee who has made explicit threats and has access to a gun to return to class or work puts us at grave risk. On the other hand, expelling a student or firing an employee who thought they were making a joke won’t make us any safer, and can have a serious, long-lasting impact on them, their families, and their future. Even when someone is a threat, firing or expelling them may actually increase the likelihood of future violence. For many of us, choosing between life-altering options amounts to a poorly educated guess. But there is a readily-available and far better answer – a simple, validated threat assessment protocol that almost anyone can learn to administer.
The term “threat assessment” is shorthand for various protocols that can be used to evaluate the risk that a person will engage in violence or die by suicide. Such protocols, once validated and properly administered, play a pivotal role in gun violence prevention, because they provide a systematic and comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing potential threats and broader risk factors of violence. They enable us to identify problematic behaviors that, when taken together and viewed in context, may be indicative of someone who is on a pathway to targeted violence. The results of that assessment then allow us to make better, informed decisions that are most likely to prevent future violence and make us safer, while avoiding unnecessary harm to those who present little risk.
Because the term “threat assessment” encompasses more than one type of protocol, it is helpful to understand the distinction between a true “threat assessment,” and a “violence and suicide risk assessment.”
A threat assessment can be conducted in the field by a school or employer. In a school setting, when a school resource officer (SRO) receives information about a person in crisis (for example, someone who has made explicit threats), the SRO would notify school administration, who would activate the school’s trained, multi-disciplinary team. The team would conduct a threat assessment by evaluating the nature, credibility, and severity of the threat, and by assessing the individual’s intent and capability to carry out the attack, including whether the individual has access to firearms. Based on the outcome of the assessment, an appropriate case management strategy can be developed, and interventions implemented. Those interventions might include monitoring the individual, skill development, resiliency building, and referrals to mental health services and supports. It might also include heightened security measures at the school and, where appropriate, formal referral to law enforcement. Central to this process is periodic reassessment of the threat and the effectiveness of the management strategy.
Violence and suicide risk assessments are conducted by qualified mental health professionals in clinical settings (e.g., the emergency department or behavioral health crisis center). Such assessments focus more on the interplay between symptoms of mental health and substance use disorders and other evidence-based risk factors associated with violence toward self and others. These factors, determined through public health research of demographic and socio-economic data, adverse childhood events, social determinants of health, and access to firearms, extrapolate individual risk from population-level risk and help estimate the level of risk of imminent harm to self or others in that moment, and inform possible clinical interventions.
Although the differences between threat assessment and suicide/violence risk assessment may seem subtle, they are, in fact, distinct processes supported by their own respective evidence bases and best practices. Furthermore, threat assessments and suicide/violence risk assessments are not mutually exclusive, and both may be used in the same case. For example, a school threat assessment like the one described above may lead to a clinical suicide/violence risk assessment that reveals serious, uncontrolled mental health symptoms associated with an elevated risk of suicide and/or violence. In that case, the primary intervention may be in-patient psychiatric hospitalization. The reverse is also true - exploration of possible thoughts of suicide or homicide during the course of a psychiatric evaluation may reveal a threat of targeted violence, activating a multi-disciplinary team to assess the nature and severity of the threat and to develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies like temporarily removing the student from school.
Threat assessments and suicide/violence risk assessments apply at the individual level. But risk can also be assessed at a community or population level and addressed with public health measures. This involves examining and understanding how various elements such as social dynamics, economic and health disparities, mental health resources, the prevalence of firearms, and other social determinants of health impact overall rates of gun violence in the community. For instance, if the community has high rates of unemployment and limited access to mental health services, these factors could contribute to an overall increased risk of violence. Population-level interventions intended to reduce the overall likelihood of gun violence might include community outreach programs, mental health support initiatives, and legislative measures to enhance gun safety. Together, threat assessment, suicide/violence risk assessment, and public health measures play a powerful role in the prevention of gun violence, combining targeted actions against specific threats along with comprehensive public health strategies to address the root causes of violence.
In the section below we detail threat assessment as a multidisciplinary and comprehensive tool to identifying, evaluating, and addressing threats of targeted violence. We also describe best practices and make recommendations for implementing and using a threat assessment model. Finally, we cite current evidence around their safety effectiveness, and their potential applications across settings.
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