Need help from a psychologist in writing an article

(address of one of the authors of the project):

The question is rather not to established professionals, but to those who are still at the beginning of the path, who are interested in mastering new and non-standard, enthusiasts, who have not yet been swallowed up by routine or «star disease», who still have creative aspiration.

If briefly and essentially: I need a co-author for an article (not scientific, but applied), the direction - criminal psychology, behavior analysis (profiling), the theme of the article – «Ensuring the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children from threats of criminal and terrorist nature», the section for co-authorship - (the name is still conditional) «Development, implementation and effective use of behavioral analysis techniques in the activities of patrol units of specialized police services».

A "small" preface to make it clear what we are talking about.

I started studying this problem a long time ago. I did not try to look for social, moral, medical, philosophical, religious or conspiracy reasons and sources of this threat (I will leave it to political scientists), for two reasons, first: in my opinion, in this case we are dealing not with the rule but with exceptions to it, this is not part of a system, each "school shooter" is unique in its own way and each such tragedy should be treated as a separate case, I fully share Dr. Peter Langman's opinion that there is no single psychotype of a «school shooter» and finding one is a utopia. The second reason: while specialists are searching for the «root of the problem» in the field of high materia medica, murders and other types of crimes against children continue, which means that it is necessary to develop a system of measures to prevent, deter and directly suppress these threats until the source of their occurrence is not (if ever) found and eliminated. I have focused my efforts on exploring the possibilities of directly countering these threats.

I looked at statistics, the specifics of the perpetration, as well as the dynamics of similar cases in other countries, read police reports, expert opinions, other analytics, compared, analyzed. The results did not inspire optimism; the situation turned out to be much worse than I had originally thought. The main conclusion was that in the 21st century, schools, other educational institutions (including universities and kindergartens), as well as places where children are present in large numbers, have become high-risk objects, where the number of threats, their level and the degree of danger are constantly growing, while meeting virtually no resistance. Then I turned my attention to developments in the field of countering these threats. I was particularly interested in the approach to solving the issue of ensuring the security of educational institutions in the U.S., and more specifically in two megacities: New York and Los Angeles, despite the fact that these are the two largest cities in the U.S. (taking into account agglomerations, they are home to almost 10% of the country's population), over the past 20 years (according to FBI surveys) there have been almost no serious attacks on educational institutions there, there have been isolated incidents (1 in each city), in both cases there were no fatalities. In my opinion, this is the result of a special approach to security in educational institutions in these cities, I will not tell you for a long time .

Taking these two units as a basis, I tried to adapt the principles of their activities to the realities in Russia, also supplemented with some of my own suggestions and developments. As a result, I got a draft model of "Integrated security system of schools, other educational institutions, as well as other organizations and with mass attendance of children, from threats of terrorist and criminal nature.

I analyzed the situation in this direction, my forecasts and proposals in my article, which I first published in May 2019. After that, I supplemented it several times, taking into account new tragedies. The last change I made in January 2022, after which I decided not to make additions to the existing publication, and began to work on a new, more extensive in the level of materials for analysis, and most importantly, concrete proposals for prevention and suppression of not only existing but also future threats, covering more areas of possible effective use of the proposed model through its improvement and flexibility. Here I finish with the preface and come to the point.

What kind of help do I need? I briefly described the situation in my already published article, Part 2, section «Some issues of staffing and training of school security units», where I propose to improve the professional level of officers of one of the units serving on the streets by training them in the methods of behavioral analysis. However, here we are talking about a completely different tactic of its use, it should be a kind of express-method, allowing employees, by certain signs and actions, to identify in the flow of people those who have plotted to commit a particularly dangerous crime, such as a mass murder or terrorist act.

Immediately I want to get ahead of the arguments of skeptics that filtering the flow of people in order to identify persons with suspicious behavior, using methods of behavioral analysis is ineffective, and an experienced criminal can easily bypass it. I will not object, it is really true if we are talking about a professional. Here, however, we are dealing with completely different subjects, those for whom this crime is the first, and in most cases, the last in their lives. If it is a «School Shooter», the final action he planned is usually suicide. If it's a terrorist attack, the perpetrator will, in most cases, also be a suicide bomber. Simply put, in both cases we are dealing with amateurs. Accordingly, we cannot speak of any professional equanimity and self-control of these two categories of criminals. Often it is just the opposite - their behavior contains a large number of external signs of what they are up to. And if on their way there are people who are able to recognize these intentions, it will significantly increase the chances that the threat can be neutralized without victims, and this is the main goal.

The main question is: Is it realistic to develop a methodology for such behavioral analysis that can be used to filter the flow of people? It is clear that we are not talking about 100% efficiency, but at least about «with a high probability». If yes, this is the subject of the article, which I will insert as a separate section in the main publication with obligatory indication of authorship (and if necessary other requisites).  

I tell you right away that I do it only for myself, on a voluntary basis, I have no sponsors, no one pays me royalties (and I actually do not ask), so I can not pay for your work, so all on bare enthusiasm.

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions on the substance of the post, write in the comments.

To contact the author, please write to romangrishin86@gmail.com