Table Of ContentDeath Threats and Violence
Stephen J. Morewitz
Death Threats and Violence
New Research and Clinical Perspectives
Stephen J. Morewitz
San Francisco, California
Tarzana, California
Buffalo Grove, Illinois
USA
ISBN: 978-0-387-76661-4 e-ISBN: 978-0-387-76663-8
DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-76663-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008923363
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Preface
Until recent decades, there was little emphasis on studying death threats as a social
or psychological phenomenon. However, since the 1960s, attacks on public officials
and celebrities and the ubiquitous nature of homicidal threats in face-to-face rela-
tions have spawned research and new organizational responses to death threats and
related behaviors, such as stalking. Publicized workplace-related death threats and
shootings, such as the 21 separate incidents since 1986 in which U.S. Postal Service
employees were shot, and the death threats and attacks directed at schools and
universities have helped to transform death threats from a private phenomenon into
a social problem. Political leaders have developed new policies, organizational
structures, and laws in an attempt to prevent death threats and related violence.
Moreover, in the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. government and other governments
around the world have formulated new policies and organizational structures to deal
with the threat of terrorist attacks.
At the level of interpersonal relations, the weakening of social control processes
allows individuals to make homicidal threats against people and organizations in
different settings. This book will address such questions as, Under what conditions
are individuals able to evade social control by making death threats? What factors
trigger the response of social control mechanisms to death threat makers? How
effective are the institutional responses to death threats? At the macrolevel, this
book assesses how governments and paramilitary and terrorist groups also employ
death threats to achieve their desired social and political objectives.
Data from the Stalking and Violence Project (SVP) and other sources are used
to explore the nature of death threats and the process of regulating offenders in
different relationships (see Appendix A, “Research Methods,” and Appendix B, “Study
Results,” Tables B.1 to B.14). The SVP data are derived from a random sample of
519 victims of self-reported domestic violence who filed restraining orders in two
large metropolitan areas.
Chapter 1 explores the different forms in which death threats are communicated
and their impact on the social control process. This chapter emphasizes the different
meanings and consequences of death threats in different settings.
Chapter 2 describes the characteristics of death threat makers and focuses on
the risk factors that weaken the mechanisms of social control and increase the
v
vi Preface
likelihood that individuals will make death threats. In addition, the duty of health
care professionals to report death threats is examined.
Chapter 3 determines the attributes of individuals that increase the likelihood
that they will be the victims of homicidal threats. This chapter also analyzes the
psychosocial impact of death threats on partners and their families and emphasizes
the different forms of emotional trauma that face death threat victims and their
families. The uses of medical, counseling, and shelter services by death threat
victims are compared with the uses by non–death threat victims.
Chapter 4 examines the possible link between stalking and death threats that
result in homicide and other acts of violence. The psychosocial impact of stalking
and death threats is presented.
In Chapter 5, the ways in which access to and use of weapons weaken the
mechanisms of social control and increase the chances that persons will make death
threats are discussed.
Chapter 6 examines the role of substance use and abuse in weakening the social
control process and increasing the probability of death threats and related
violence.
In Chapter 7, the nature of death threats made against schools and colleges is
explored.
The prevalence and risk factors for workplace-related death threats are analyzed
in Chapter 8.
Chapter 9 discusses the weakening of social controls due to wars, cultural and
personal pressures, and ethnic/political conflicts.
In Chapter 10, the role of homicidal threats in the commission of hate crimes is
assessed.
Chapter 11 explores how the weakening of social control allows terrorists to make
death threats to achieve their social, cultural, religious, and political objectives.
Chapter 12 discusses the legality of death threats and the responses of the
legal system to such threats. The ways in which the police and the courts respond
to complaints of death threats are evaluated. It describes the situations that cre-
ate probable cause for the police to arrest a person for making death threats. The
chapter also examines the degree to which police contacts and arrest patterns
differ between partner violence offenders who make death threats and those who
do not.
San Francisco, California, USA Stephen J. Morewitz
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Mrs. Myra Kalkin Morewitz and Dr. Harry A. Morewitz for
their advice and support. I would also like to thank Sharon Panulla, Executive
Editor, and Anna Tobias, Associate Editor, Behavioral Sciences, at Springer
Science + Business Media, LLC, who have been supportive as well as thorough and
thoughtful.
San Francisco, California, USA Stephen J. Morewitz
vii
Contents
1 Homicidal Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Death Threat Makers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Death Threat Victims. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4 Stalking and Homicidal Threats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5 Death Threats and Weapon Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6 Substance Use and Abuse, and Homicidal Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7 Death Threats and Violence at Schools and Colleges. . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8 Workplace Homicidal Threats and Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
9 Crime, Culture, and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
10 Hate Crimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
11 Death Threats and Terrorism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
12 Death Threats and the Legal System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Appendix A Research Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Appendix B Study Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
ix
Chapter 1
Homicidal Threats
Every day in the media we hear about death threats. Death threats are often made
against individuals, i.e., “I am going to kill you,” and groups, organizations,
i ndustries, and countries, i.e., “Death to America.” Often these threats are
accompanied by shouts, specific gestures, and other threatening behaviors.
This book proposes that people who make death threats (DTMs—death threat
makers) do so in socially patterned ways. Norms and behaviors associated with
demographic status (age, gender, etc.), plus socioeconomic factors help to influence
the frequency and intensity of death threats and other forms of related violence.
Religious and political beliefs, pregnancy, the use of alcohol and other drugs, and
access to weapons may alter the ways in which death threats are made.
DTMs make their threats in an attempt to dominate and control another person
by instilling terror and subordination. In some cases DTMs will assault strangers
on the street having previously terrorizing them with a death threat. At other times,
the mere voicing of the threat may be enough to satisfy the DTM.
Death threats also can be used to achieve specific agendas, such as “ encouraging”
victims to move out of a neighborhood, or paying “protection” in order to stay in
business. In cases of domestic violence, the threats can be used in an attempt to
prevent the victim from leaving the relationship. False accusations of homicidal
threats have been made in order to gain a legal advantage in domestic violence or
child custody proceedings.
Paradoxically, however, when death threats prove ineffective, DTMs will
f requently escalate the use of other forms of intimidation, including the use of
emotional, physical, and/or sexual violence.
Homicidal threats may be made in response to perceived or actual threats. They
can reflect the essential social powerlessness and inadequacy of the DTMs. For
example, the targets’ social characteristics may seem to threaten the DTMs’ i dentity
and values and beliefs. In other instances, death threats may be the result of a DTM’s
inability to function due to mental illness, delusions, or other major dysfunctions.
For DTMs in the context of social interactions, partner, and domestic relations,
death threats are about privatizing relationships, dehumanizing the victims, and
isolating them from family, friends, the criminal justice system, the mental health
system, etc. This can be a cyclical process that mirrors the vicious cycle of domestic
S.J. Morewitz, Death Threats and Violence, DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-76663-8_1, 1
© Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 2008
2 1 Homicidal Threats
violence in that DTMs threaten to kill, say they are sorry, reconcile and then repeat
the process, thus evading the institutions of social control.
When death threats are socially constructed in face-to-face interactions, some of
the recipients may interpret these statements, gestures, and behaviors as threatening
while others do not. It is through the social construction of death threats that DTMs
are able to dominate and control their victims by repeated threats accompanied by
the statement that the police are powerless to intervene.
It is by investigating the varying social and cultural conditions in simple and
complex societies that we can begin to determine how and why individuals develop
socially constructed meanings about death threats and how they respond to those
threats. For example, MacDonald (1968) described how cultural traditions in the
Balinese village of Bajoeng Gede, permitted a man to try to slash other people with
his machete when they asked to borrow it.
Other societal trends, such as the privacy of the family, the expansion of
anonymity in city and suburban life, and the weakening of the socialization process
in the family, allow for deviant behaviors, which in simple societies would have
been less likely to occur. This breakdown in social control allows DTMs in intimate
and non-intimate relations to make death threats in the context of retaliation,
conflict, hate, love, frustration, and bitterness.
The breakdown or weakening in social control is also reflected in DTMs who
make death threats against work places, schools, universities and other facilities,
often because of some real or imagined injustice. In other instances, the DTMs have
severe mental disorders and for some irrational reason issue a death threat. Other
DTMs threaten organizations as a prank, as an attention getting mechanism, or to
exert power and control over an institution.
DTMs who make death threats can evade social control because it is often not
against the law to make such a threat unless there are other conditions present, such
as a threatening gesture or an otherwise innocent gesture made threatening by
accompanying words that create a reasonable apprehension of imminent battery
(Merheb v. Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, 2001; Restatement (Second) of
Torts, section 29, 1979). Thus, society has a bias in favor of action, e.g., gesture or
behavior over mere words.
The inability of victims and their family and friends to effectively respond to the
DTMs’ death threats is another example of weakened social control processes. The
victims may not believe the threat is real. In fact, most death threats are never
carried out. Instead, the DTMs use death threats to dominate and control their
v ictims. While death treats in themselves may not serve as a prelude to murder, they
do indicate that severe forms of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse are likely to
occur in the future.
At times death threats cause such intense fear that the victims are paralyzed into
inaction. In other instances, in a reversal of roles, the victims may react by killing
their abusers, thus illustrating the tenuous nature of domination and control
(Browne, 1984; Walker, 1984).
The social process of making homicidal threats can lead to corrective action
whereby victims respond to the threats by seeking the social support of other family
