Introduction Risk Assessment Method Threatening Letters: A Structured Approach for Disturbing and Threatening Letters

Abstract

The Risk Assessment Method Threatening Letters (RAT in brief) provides assessors such as forensic psychologists working for law enforcement and justice departments with a structured assessment method for threatening letters. On the basis of an assessment framework and guidelines, threatening letters will be analysed according to eighteen characteristics. The purpose is to arrive at a risk definition regarding the chances that a person will resort to violence, and to apply risk management to individuals who make threats. With the development of the RAT, efforts have been made regarding the identification of threat level of persons whose identity has not yet been established or who have not been detained, due to the absence of a criminal file. With an assessment form, the presence and relevance of eighteen characteristics divided into: content words (9), emotion words (5), linguistic features (3) and details (1), are examined in disturbing and threatening letters. The content analysis allows assessors to encode a text in binary units of measurement (present or not present) and is based on a combination of empirical knowledge and professional judgement. The objective concerns individuals who are posting (repeated) threatening or disturbing letters on social media and whose authorship must be reviewed to reveal background characteristics for the writer, in the case: 1. they are written anonymously; 2. they are intimidating in nature; 3. they undermine faith in social institutions. Its scope includes public figures such as representatives of the government who frequently are subject to threat or violence. However, the RAT is equally useful for the interpretation of threats aimed at other persons in whose cases the nature and seriousness of the type of threat is also of importance.