Warning behaviours and risk factors preceding acts of individual terrorism

Michał Nowopolski , Marlena Banasik , Józef Gierowski

Abstract

The increasing number of violent acts committed throughout the world, including recent tragic incidents in Poland, such as the murder of the mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, the attempted murder of the former mayor of Siedlce, and stabbings of groups of people in public places, raise significant questions concerning the psychopathological analysis of perpetrators and their core motives. This article addresses individual terrorism: serious attacks performed by perpetrators acting alone. The majority of these acts involve planned, intentional and targeted violence against random groups of people, but some, such as school shootings, are against deliberately selected groups of people, and some are against public figures. Taking as their case a serious attack against a group of people in a shopping centre in southern Poland, the authors performed a retrospective investigation to identify the proximal and distal warning behaviours – as derived from the TRAP-18 tool – and the historical and clinical violence risk factors – as derived from HCR-20 Version III.