Focus on Safety: What is a Behavioral Threat Assessment?
Ankeny Community Schools is dedicated to providing a safe environment for students. Violence prevention is always the first goal of providing a safe environment, but it is also important to determine why a student (or another individual) made a threat and to address whatever conflict or problem motivated the threat. When a person (or persons) threatens to commit a violent act or engages in behavior that appears to threaten an act of violence, a threat assessment is conducted to evaluate the threat and the circumstances surrounding it. Threat assessments are a problem-solving approach to violence prevention that involves both assessment AND intervention with individuals who have threatened violence toward others.
Threat assessments are not punishment, nor are they used to determine punishment. The threat assessment and intervention process is designed to prevent violence by helping the individual to resolve the problem through a system of supports, thereby removing the impetus for violence. Safety precautions and legal actions are taken as part of the process when judged to be necessary to prevent imminent acts of violence.
Threat assessments are conducted by multi-disciplinary teams, meaning that the team may consist of school administrators, counselors, social workers, security personnel, and law enforcement.
The principles of our threat assessment process include:
- Targeted violence is not a spontaneous, unpredictable event but is the result of a deliberate and detectable process. Prevention is possible.
- Threat assessments consider not only the student who makes the threat, but the total context of the threat. This includes the situation in which the threat was made and what the student intended by making the threat. Many times the statement is transient, meaning it was a joke, insult, or rhetorical remark without a substantive intent to harm anyone.
- The threat assessment process strives to accumulate reliable evidence from multiple sources. Information from teachers, counselors, witnesses, and parents are considered. All claimed facts about the situation are verified. Conclusions are based on objective facts and behaviors rather than inferred traits or characteristics of the student making the threat