Best practice in threat assessment requires the use of standardised, evidence-based tools to assist in case formulation.
Considerable numbers of such tools have been developed for use in criminal justice, mental health and community settings. Most concern risk of violence. And, in the arena of public figures, the majority of research has concerned politicians.
There has been less attention to a more general and common problem faced regularly, not just by politicians, but by companies, family offices, those in the talent industry, and others in the public eye. That is how the recipients of problematic or threatening communications can judge which of these need referral to security departments or police for further investigation; and how agencies receiving such referrals can reach initial conclusions as to which cases require prioritisation and which do not. Or, more simply put, when people in public life receive bizarre or threatening communications, some form of system is needed to help them divide these into ones to bin and ones that need further examination by security departments or police. Further, such departments need a means to make an initial threat assessment in order to triage such referrals – and one that can be done quickly in response to limited information.
Relevant risks in this area concern not simply violence, but also persistence, escalation, disruption of function, reputational damage, financial loss, and psychological harm.
The Communications Threat Assessment Protocol (CTAP) is a structured professional judgement tool for the initial threat assessment of unwanted communications, designed to fill this gap.
This paper does two things. Firstly, it describes the process of the development of CTAP, its evolution, and how it was further refined. This is an interesting story, involving a major research project funded by the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism at the UK’s Home Office (Interior Ministry) and the development of the Fixated Threat Assessment Centres. The paper deals with the concept of construct validity, in other words whether the content of the instrument items completely represents the relevant construct, and whether scores correlate with those from other instruments assessing the same construct. Secondly, whatever the type of tool, it is necessary to ensure that its results are reliable – in other words, that it produces consistent and reproducible results between investigators and over time. This paper presents the results of exercises in the measurement of inter-rater and test-retest reliability of the CTAP.
The results of this study into the CTAP-25 are promising. It appears to measure what it is supposed to measure, and indications are that its inter-rater and test-retest reliability are high.
