Threat Assessment and Management Strategies

The field of threat assessment and the research surrounding it have exploded since the first edition of Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying the Howlers and Hunters. To reflect those changes, this second edition contains more than 100 new pages of material, including several new chapters, charts, and illustrations, as well as updated cases.

The book has been reorganized into two parts. The first part offers the authors’ current thinking on how to conduct practical and effective threat management processes. The second provides an in-depth analysis of how howlers and hunters behave and how understanding those behaviors can be used to manage each type of problem individual.

This new edition draws on the latest research, as well as ideas and concepts from the authors’ previous books. It integrates the sum of their careers in threat management―both their individual experiences managing problem situations and their research and writing on the topic―into a single volume. As in each of their previous books, it focuses on operationally effective and practical methods for managing problem situations.

This book also covers special issues in threat management, exploring the relationship between the law and the intimacy effect as well as different ways to identify, assess, and manage howlers and hunters. Each chapter concludes with a real-life situation analysis relevant to the subject under focus.

Drawing upon the latest research and on the previous work of its authors, Threat Assessment and Management Strategies, Second Edition provides a complete guide to setting up successful threat management processes. It approaches the presented strategies as guidelines rather than prescriptions, emphasizing that threat managers must use their intelligence and originality to modify strategies as necessary to suit each situation.

Frederick S. Calhoun, PhD, oversaw a national workplace violence prevention program for a large federal agency. He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. He was the lead researcher and principal architect in developing the threat assessment process used by the United States Marshals Service for analyzing risks to federal judicial officials. He also developed the service’s policies and procedures for conducting protective investigations and wrote the curriculum and led the training of deputy US Marshals Service threat investigators and their supervisors. He is the author of 12 books and teaches a periodic two-day seminar, "Managing Threats: Reducing the Risk of Violence," designed to train law enforcement officers, mental health professionals, and private security officials to identify, assess, and manage individuals of violent intent.

Stephen W. Weston, JD, is a retired 32-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol. For 15 years, he managed the unit responsible for investigating threats against California state officials and government facilities. He is the coauthor of four books with Frederick S. Calhoun, consults with government and private organizations in the management of threatening situations, and lectures throughout the United States on threat management topics. He has served as president of the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals and taught a class in the California State University system entitled "Violence and Terrorism."