Professional Conversation
The purpose of this website is not to convince you that we have all the answers. Rather, it is to share our observations, contribute to the professional conversation, and describe how we approach complex safety challenges. When appropriate, those conversations may lead to partnerships with organizations seeking thoughtful, evidence-informed solutions.
Observations
Managing SOR Issues
One North Star
A number of parents in your school district are on a sex offender registry (SOR). This is a significant issue that you should manage in a very intentional way. You need to make your schools safe. You need to build trust with parents. At some point, your district’s stance on how to manage parents listed on a registry will come under the microscope by members of your community who hold very different views. Some will want a black-and-white solution, while others will want a more flexible approach that gives a district room to consider individual circumstances. Your management of this issue must be legal, operationally feasible, acceptable to your community and defensible. The spectrum of considerations on this topic is broad. There are legal issues involved. For example, federal law under IDEA gives parents important rights to participate in the development of their child's individualized education program (IEP). At the same time, state statutes and regulations may impose additional restrictions on individuals listed on a sex offender registry, including restrictions on presence on school property. How does your district reconcile those requirements? Beyond the legal aspects, the mission of your district is to maximize student success. Can you do this if a parent can never be at school, can only attend parent-teacher conferences over the phone and can never go to a school play or a football game? After safety, the student experience should be the focus of your policy. Every school district has a unique school board that sets district expectations. A small community may choose a very different policy from a large community made up of people who hold widely different social norms. If a district’s board and their attorneys determine registrants may never be on school property, a decision has been made that is clear but almost impossible to enforce. Creating safety regulations that are not actionable can lead to trouble. Telling a parent they may not be part of their child’s educational experience is fertile ground for creating grievances. How you say no to a parent can make a big difference. The presence of a registrant on school property does not, by itself, tell us whether a particular situation is safe or unsafe. Security policies and safety protocols are made for places and times that are almost always safe. Almost always is a term of art in this discussion. Schools are not made safe by eliminating every conceivable risk. They are made safer by understanding risk and developing reasonable ways to manage it. No matter where your board and community lands on this issue, there are best practices for a district to consider. Like all successful security and safety solutions, your policy should be legal, meet the needs and culture of your community, be operationally feasible and defensible when challenged from any direction. There is a lot more discussion to have on this topic, but no thoughtful policy should be developed in isolation. Board members, district leadership, legal advisors, and local law enforcement all have perspectives that should inform the decision. Some districts will openly discuss the issue with employee groups, parents, and community members; other districts will keep the subject relatively quiet. Too often, districts manage this issue through the work of a small number of people, without making an intentional decision. Instead, they adopt a “deal with it when it becomes an issue” attitude. My observation is that this is an issue now. There is no reason to wait for the first difficult situation to decide how your district will respond.
Behavioral violence prevention is no longer a niche discipline. Increasingly, organizations recognize the need to identify, assess, and manage concerning behavior before violence occurs. Leadership teams are beginning to recognize that need as well. I am encouraged. Can organizations operate successful threat management programs that look very different from one another? They can-and in many cases they should-with one important caveat. Our understanding of targeted violence has been shaped by decades of research conducted by universities, government agencies, and professional organizations. Institutions such as the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service have made significant contributions to that body of knowledge. From this work has emerged a broadly accepted foundation of professional practice. Just as important, this work must be guided by ethical decision-making. Ethics can seem abstract, but every profession depends on them. One widely recognized example is the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals' Code of Ethical Conduct. Research, accepted professional practice, and ethical decision-making are the necessary foundations of every threat management program. Once those foundations are in place, programs can-and should- begin to look different. A team working for a hospital system cannot mirror a program at a manufacturing facility. They exist in completely different environments. Even when we talk about the same type of organization we find radical differences. Two neighborhoods may look nearly identical, yet a resident points to one side of the street and says, "If you ever move here, make sure you live on that side." The difference isn't the houses. It's that the two sides of the street belong to different school districts. School districts are independent political subdivisions with different governing boards, leadership teams, priorities, and cultures. Like every organization, they must adapt their programs to their environment and, honestly, to their budget. Threat management programs inevitably differ in size, structure, membership, policies, and scope. What they should not differ in is their alignment and fidelity to sound research, accepted professional practice, and ethical decision-making. Within those foundational principles, organizations may choose to adopt additional frameworks, assessment tools or operating models that best fit their mission and environment. Those choices can strengthen a program, but they do not replace the underlying principles that define sound professional practice. Those principles—not organizational charts, committee membership, or assessment tools—are the profession's North Star.
Security Planning Starts With Behavior
Regardless of the goals or priorities of a security plan, the behavior of the people involved should be the primary driver of its design. Security requirements vary widely depending on the environment. Schools, military installations, healthcare facilities, and places of worship all present unique challenges. Yet regardless of the setting, understanding human behavior is the security designer's first and most important task. I was recently asked by an organization that serves survivors of interpersonal violence (IPV), often referred to as domestic violence, to assist with the remodel of one of its facilities. I do not consider myself an expert in interpersonal violence. I do, however, have years of experience working alongside professionals in this space, and I have trusted colleagues with deep expertise who are helping me review my work. That collaboration immediately led me to one of the first behavioral concepts that must inform the project's security design: the Intimacy Effect. Frederick Calhoun and Stephen Weston describe the Intimacy Effect as follows: The closer the interpersonal relationship (degree of intimacy) between the threatener (subject) and the threatened (target), the greater is the likelihood of threats being carried out. This intimacy is based upon the subject's perception of the relationship, which may be delusional and completely unknown to the target. Calhoun and Weston are giants in the field of threat assessment. Their book, Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying the Hunters and Howlers, remains foundational reading for professionals who work in violence prevention and threat management. This single behavioral principle has significant implications for security planning. Understanding how IPV offenders may think, behave, and attempt to regain control informs the operational protocols that help protect both survivors and staff. Only after those behavioral considerations have been addressed does it make sense to determine which physical security measures—controlled access, surveillance cameras, alarm systems, or environmental design—best support those operational goals. Too often, the cart comes before the horse. Organizations purchase cameras, card readers, or other security technology before clearly understanding the behaviors they are trying to prevent or manage. As a result, generic security systems are installed in environments with fundamentally different missions and threat profiles. Before deciding what security measures to implement, we should first ask what we need to understand about the behavior of the people who will use—and potentially exploit—the environment. Effective security design begins with an understanding of human behavior.