Angry, Aggrieved, or Extreme? The Role of Motivation in Lone Actor Violence

Lone actor violence presents as an increasing problem across society and for those working in frontline roles to prevent these attacks. Over the past two decades, many different causes and factors have been attributed to explain offending, however, amongst these efforts to classify behaviour, motivation is often lost or misunderstood. The training outlines the challenges that arise from seeking to explain motivation through ideology or terrorism and identifies the importance of understanding the person and their circumstances through questioning and hypothesis formulation. The training will scrutinise the role of motivation in lone actor violence, and demonstrate that through guided questioning and formulation improved responses, assessment, and prevention efforts can occur.

Dr Nathan Brooks is a Consultant Forensic Psychologist and has broad experience pertaining to risk and threat assessment, along with having worked in both the private and public sectors. As a member of the Behavioural Science Unit within New Zealand Police, Nathan has provided consultancy on security matters and a variety of threat situations and events and advised on numerous serious and major crime investigations. Across his career, he focused primarily on high-risk and high-harm matters, particularly in respect to personality and behavioural risk indicators. Nathan has conducted lectures and workshops on leading matters in the field, delivering these services nationally and internationally. He has produced a variety of peer-reviewed articles and publications on a range of topics, including lone actor violence, psychopathic personality, personality disorders, criminal profiling, sexual offending, cold case investigations, targeted violence, investigative practices, grievance-fuelled violence, and stalking. He is also the joint editor of a book focusing on psychopathic personality within the workplace and he is about to publish a new book on Mass Casualty Violence.