Forensic psychologist Dr Lisa Warren, an expert on assessing whether violent threats are credible. Photo: Simon Schluter
The young man seated opposite forensic psychologist Dr Lisa Warren was showing all the warning signs.
At 22, he had just been convicted of threatening to kill his girlfriend, was addicted to amphetamines, unemployed, and had a disturbing compulsion to cut the tails off small animals.
Was he going to be the killer he promised he would be?
Dr Warren has assessed thousands of people who make threats to kill, to commit mass murders, plant bombs and in one case to rape her.
She is one of the world’s leading experts on threats to kill, with a PhD on threats and 15 years’ close study of the worst impulses of human behaviour: fear, rage, hate and sexual deviance.
Her work has shifted from prisons and forensic clinics to medical offices, where in a mundane room the remarkable is contained to the troubled minds she treats.
She co-founded the Code Black consulting firm, an agency for those faced with people behaving in a way that is offensive, frightening and traumatic, such as a university lecturer who is being stalked by a female student.
For every thousand threat-makers that have responded to treatment – for all those cases that fill her head when she’s asked whether violent people really can change – there are a rare few who can’t be saved.
“There are people who have personality traits that mean their natural reaction or their first instinct is to want to protect themselves, even if that is damaging to others, then there are those that take some delight in harming others,” she says.
“One was a relatively young person who talked about violence like you and I talk about what we would make for dinner tonight.”
These rare individuals haunt Dr Warren, more so than the boy who threatened to rape, she says. He just needed treatment.
Her mentor is Professor Paul Mullen, the forensic psychiatrist who helped design the threat assessment centre that now protects the Queen of England.
Together, they are at the forefront of a close-knit Victorian community of forensic mental health experts – who are considered among the best in the world.
Dr Warren’s work has changed the way we think about threats.
“Our most important research finding is that most who threaten to kill will not, but many who kill threaten first,” she says.
“If you talk about violence you become more likely to commit violence.”
She studied more than 600 Victorians who had been convicted of threats to kill and discovered half of them did go on to commit violent crimes, including murder.
That report – co-authored by Professor Mullen and Professor James Ogloff and published in 2008 – shattered the old perception that threats were irrelevant to the risk of violence.
They also discovered about half the individuals who turned to violence after making threats had previously been in contact with mental health services.
A picture of high-risk threat-makers was emerging.
Dr Warren, Professor Mullen and Professor Ogloff then assessed a group of 144 people and found that substance abuse, prior violence, limited education and untreated mental disorders increased the likelihood that a person who has made a threat will carry it out.
Those who went on to commit violence after making threats had also shown an inability to manage conflict.
And therein lies part of the solution, Dr Warren explains. “We see problem behaviours as skills deficits, so the more you skill and educate people the less likely they are to keep doing this.”
Back to that young man who had tortured animals.
A Crisis Assessment and Treatment team had been called in when he started to threaten his girlfriend. After they determined he wasn’t mentally ill, they referred the case to Dr Warren.
Within a year of treatment, including cognitive behavioural therapy, he had returned to TAFE, was working part-time and had reconnected with his family.
“We treated his drug issues, challenged his attitudes about violence and taught him social skills, including conflict resolution,” she said.
“Instead of being someone who damaged society, he became someone who contributed to society.”
He had also agreed not to own pets in the foreseeable future.