We currently live in a society that is “an environment conducive to criminality:” virtually all aspects of the most popular forms of entertainment involve violence and anti-social behavior (movies, television, video games, etc.); the news media thrives on violence and anti-social behavior (count the number of such stories versus “good” or “nice” news); society by and large has come to accept violence and anti-social behavior (we abide such behaviors in our neighborhoods and schools, our criminal justice system is virtually an ineffective revolving door, etc.); and we expend resources to protect ourselves usually only after a tragic event has occurred. In other words, we may not like it, but we actually do – or can do – little about it.
We try to find reasons for violent behavior, and try to find
ways to “predict” it in hopes of preventing it. But is such a lofty goal even possible? Or does the concept of preventing problems exist only in theory,
not reality or practicality? Consider:
“Behavior modification” is a great term and concept –
provided that we have some idea as to whose behavior we are attempting to
modify. When the threat is external to
an organization, how can we begin to know which of the next 732 persons to
enter a facility is the one whose behavior needs modifying? How can we begin to know if the “behavior
modification” techniques that might work on 731 of those persons will work on
the 1 who will actually be the next shooter?
If none of those 732 go on a shooting rampage today, does that mean that
our “behavior modification” techniques were successful – or that none of them
simply chose today as the day to shoot?
Etc. etc. etc.
We see examples of our efforts to find a new way to predict
the next shooter every time another incident occurs (and by the way, nothing
PREDICTS behavior – certain behaviors may be indicated, but none can be
PREDICTED). But the reality is that
there is virtually nothing we can do because, even when some people see the
signs, nothing is done because “if you see something, say something” is not
socially acceptable, or is contrary to HIPAA (when the see-er is a mental or
medical health professional), or is something that “…I was going to do later…”
or whatever. Families, bosses,
co-workers, fellow classmates, etc. see things every day that are indicators of
potential violent behavior, but do nothing because it is simply not politically
correct or they’re busy or they did not realize what they were seeing or a
million other excuses.
After every new incident comes another discussion of the
same things, and the results are always the same – nothing gets changed,
because nothing can really be changed.
Because even when problems are indicated before they occur, we still
almost never do anything about them until after they have occurred.
Security professionals do not control organizational purse
strings or the magic key to the CEO’s psyche, so we cannot implement the things
which we know will pretty much stop the bad guys from doing most bad things
most of the time. And all of the
studies and nice terminology and fancy graphs will never change that fact. (And while agencies such as the U.S. Secret
Service do a great job of behavioral analysis, remember that they have an
entire division of professionals who do nothing but behavioral analysis and
have the resources to investigate and check out their findings and leads and
have to “only” protect a handful of key assets.)
So in the end, all
we as security professionals can really DO (as opposed to discussing theory and
hypothesis) is do the best we can with resources our bosses choose to expend –
that is, protect to the best of our abilities, with whatever resources we have
been allotted, whatever our bosses have decided are our key assets. Period.
Posts
