From “Sad People on Bridges” to “Kidnap and Extortion”: Understanding the Nature and Situational Characteristics of Hostage and Crisis Negotiator Deployments

Abstract

Hostage and crisis negotiation is well established as a police tool, and there is a growing body of literature that provides academic insight into the phenomenon. Academics have developed a corpus of literature to explain the way negotiators operate or how they can resolve incidents successfully. Whilst research in this area has originated from various countries and addressed negotiation from a variety of perspectives, there is limited research that has focused specifically on negotiation from an Anglo‐centric perspective. This article presents the findings from a detailed academic examination of negotiator experiences in England, whereby semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 negotiators from nine forces. Analysis using grounded theory revealed 12 deployment categories, situated within a recurring context involving subjects experiencing personal, emotional, or psychological crisis. These categories can be used to enhance our understanding of negotiator deployment in England and are discussed with reference to the implications for negotiator training and practice.

Understanding the Prevalence and Situational Characteristics of Hostage and Crisis Negotiation in England: an Analysis of Pilot Data from the National Negotiator Deployment Database

“…In relation to the methods of communication utilised, data is missing for approximately a third of cases; however, faceto-face communication was the most commonly utilised method (34.9%), with telephone communication being the second most commonly utilised method (27.1%), suggesting that other forms of communication (such as text messaging or social media chat) are utilised far less than the traditional methods of communication. Intriguingly, despite face-toface communication being the most commonly utilised method, telephone communication was rated as the most effective method when utilised which is interesting when considered in light of face-to-face communication being reported as the preferred method of communication within preexisting research (Grubb 2016;Grubb et al (2020). These findings suggest that more research needs to be performed in order to understand whether HCN is more effective when performed in a face-to-face or telephone format.…”

“…The majority of incidents (n = 85; 51.2%) were resolved using negotiation, 27.7% (n = 46) of incidents were resolved via a non-negotiated surrender, 7.2% (n = 12) of incidents required 10 According to Grubb et al (2019), pseudo-kidnapping constitutes "crime in action" situations that are referred to colloquially as "bad-on-bad" kidnappings. These types of kidnappings tend to involve gang or criminal vendettas, organised crime or drug dealer conflict or disputes, with one "bad" party taking one of the other bad party's family members hostage in order to settle an outstanding debt of some kind.…”

“…11 A victim is an individual who has been prevented from leaving a premises by the subject (i.e. there is no direct threat to the victims but they are being prevented from leaving the premises or are too frightened to leave because the person in control does not want them to leave) (Grubb et al 2019).…”

“…Hostage and crisis negotiation (HCNn) 1 is an important aspect of modern-day policing, with hostage and crisis negotiators (HCNs) serving a vital role in the resolution of hostage and crisis incidents. HCNs can be utilised/are deployed in a variety of different scenarios ranging from responding to suicidal individuals to dealing with kidnap and extortion cases (Grubb et al 2019). Research conducted in the United States of America (USA) has helped to build a picture of HCN deployment, identifying several broad categories (Boltz et al 1992;McMains and Mullins 1996), with the caveat that the subtypes are not entirely mutually exclusive (Miller 2005).…”

“There’s nothing that compares to it”: a grounded theoretical analysis of the experiences of police hostage and crisis negotiators

“…The majority of HCNs in England are police officers who perform this role in a voluntary capacity, alongside their day-to-day role. Whilst these officers perform negotiation as an adjunct role, they constitute part of a highly specialised team, having completed an intensive set of training to equip them to respond to a spectrum of incidents ranging from suicidal individuals to kidnap and extortion cases (see Grubb, Brown, Hall, & Bowen, 2019a). Police officers who apply to become HCNs often have to meet extensive selection criteria (which varies from country to country) and have to complete a rigorous assessment and training process in order to qualify as operational HCNs (see Grubb, Brown, Hall, & Bowen, 2018).…”