Secret Service research pioneered the Systems Approach to behavioral threat assessment when it published Protective Intelligence and Threat Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Officials in 1998.
The guide describes how examining the “systems (family, work, community, criminal justice, mental health, and social services) that the individual is involved with are key to assessing and managing a potential threat.”
Gathering information from a variety of community systems will provide BTAUs with an organized and comprehensive way to assess an individual’s thinking and behavior.
The Systems Approach operationalizes how people tend to exhibit different behaviors in different environments. An individual’s communications and behaviors will often adapt to the context of their current situation.
For example, individuals may act differently when visiting family compared to how they act in a meeting with coworkers.
Therefore, gathering information from various community systems provides a more comprehensive and reliable assessment of an individual’s behavior than would be possible by only focusing on a single area of their life.
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