Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying the Howlers and Hunters

A crucial step in any successful threat management process is knowledge of the players involved. Some individuals truly intend violence (known as hunters), while others merely want to threaten or draw attention to themselves (howlers). Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying the Howlers and Hunters helps those who interact with questionable populations to identify problem behaviors and determine the appropriate preventative action.

A successful threat management process does not necessarily depend on large staffs or huge resource commitments, but, instead, on attention to detail and a thoughtful approach. Through actual case studies and case analyses, this volume explains the best practices for assessing problem individuals and recommends the optimal protective response and management strategy. The authors provide key indicators of hunters and howlers, comparing and contrasting their behaviors and motivations. An entire chapter is devoted to analyzing the intimacy effect and demonstrating how it applies to law enforcement, specifically to interpersonal relationships involving targets of intended violence.

Frederick S. Calhoun, Ph.D. was the principal architect in developing the threat-assessment process used by the U.S. Marshals Service for analyzing risks to federal judicial officials. Currently, he manages a national workplace violence prevention program for a large federal agency. Stephen J. Weston is a 32-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol. From 1991 to 2006, he managed the unit responsible for the investigation of threats against California state officials. Their combined expertise provides anyone who is involved in managing potentially violent situations with the guidance needed to contain the threat posed by these would-be predators.