Threatening and Otherwise Inappropriate Letters to Members of the United States Congress

Abstract

The authors examine the characteristics of threatening and otherwise inappropriate communications sent to members of the U.S. Congress by a sample of 86 subjects, 20 of whom threatened assassination. We quote excerpts from these letters and provide quantitative data on such variables as the volume, duration, form, and appearance of such communications; the enclosures; the subjects' perceived relationships to the recipients; the thematic content of the communications; and the messages and threats communicated. Comparisons between 43 subjects who pursued encounters with members of Congress and 43 who did not revealed 17 factors associated with such pursuit. In this population, threateners were significantly less likely to pursue an encounter than inappropriate letter writers who did not threaten, regardless of the type of threat or the harm threatened. Inappropriate letters to members of Congress are compared with those directed to Hollywood celebrities. Mentally disordered persons writing to public figures often mention and sometimes threaten public figures other than those to whom the letters are addressed, which raises important issues regarding notification of endangered third parties and the sharing of information among protective agencies.

The problem behavior model: the development of a stalkers clinic and a threateners clinic

“…There is a modest literature that empirically examines threats (Calhoun, 1998;Dietz et al, 1991aDietz et al, , 1991bMeloy, 2001;Scalora, Baumgartner, & Plank, 2003). One of the few systematic studies of psychiatric assessment after uttering a homicidal threat reported nearly half to be psychotic and most of the rest personality disordered (MacDonald, 1968).…”

The relationship of mental illness to targeted contact behavior toward state government agencies and officials

“…While some research has found no relationship between active mental illness symptoms and targeted violence (see, e.g., , others have associated the presence of mental illness symptomatology with higher-risk behavior, such as approaching or attempting to approach the target (see, e.g., Baumgartner, Scalora, & Plank, 2001;Dietz et al, 1991a). Coggins et al (1996) noted, for example, that in a review of United States Secret Service cases involving threats against the President, approximately 50% of all subjects had received mental health care.…”

Content Analysis for Proactive Protective Intelligence

“…As reported in [2], six studies have been carried out to date on abnormal communication and approach to prominent people: one on the British royal family [18], two on Hollywood celebrities [19,20], and three on the U.S. Congress [21,22,23]. The studies relate the occurrence of problematic approaches to factors such as mental illness, threatening or antagonistic communication, requests for help, multiple means of communication, and multiple contacts and targets.…”

“…Creation of a dataset of abnormal communications to protectees, in which each communication is marked as to whether it escalated in a problematic approach. Such a dataset can be seeded with the document collections used in previous studies on problematic approaches to U.S. Congress members [21,22,23]. Additional data could be collected with the help of the USSS National Threat Assessment Center and other law enforcement organizations, and through resources such as the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD) and the National Criminal Justice Reference Center (http://www.ncjrs.gov/index.html).…”

“…Use of insights of existing studies on abnormal communications and approaches [18][19][20][21][22][23] to tune the information extraction and content analysis capabilities available in the Frames in Action platform to the protective intelligent domain. The code books (list of factors and their explanation) developed in these studies (e.g.…”