Can extreme violence events be prevented?

[Warrigal]

Came across this article based in coronial findings of an incident in Queensland where six people were fatally shot on a remote property.

The article is quite lengthy, as is the coroner's report. Full article can be found at the link below.

I'm not going to attempt to simplify the findings of the inquest, nor the other issues raised in the article, but the words "predictable can mean preventable" give an indication of why this case is significant.

Wieambilla inquest sheds light on how to prevent similar violence

A paper published by two British academics in 2000 examined 40 homicides committed by someone with a mental illness.

What it found was that just about a quarter of the homicides were predictable. That is, the vast majority of homicides could not have been reasonably suspected to have happened based on a risk assessment of the perpetrator.

However, it found that two-thirds were preventable. That is because solutions like improving mental health care and responding to parent relapse could limit violence, regardless of whether the person had been assessed as being a high risk or not.

At a population level, we know some will become violent; we don't know which ones, but we can help all of them.

The same thinking can be applied here. Mental health clearly played a large role. In fact, the first sentence of Gareth Train's biography in the report notes that he was born prematurely — something that one expert witness speculated might have left him with brain damage that contributed to his cognitive issues.

The enormous disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread social isolation, a backlash from some to the unprecedented government intrusion in the form of public health orders and mass uncertainty. At a national level, the wealth and perception of corruption appear to influence how much a population accepts conspiracy theories. It makes sense that people are more likely to seek alternative narratives when their lives are hard and unfair. It can feel unsatisfying to conclude that maybe it's unreasonable to expect that the Trains's attack at Wieambilla could be predicted. For grieving families, it might even feel like betrayal.

But an acknowledgement that it is impossible to be able to ever confidently predict who is going to lash out like this is not the same as a surrender. (Ironically, this uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty is a key motivation for why people embrace the simplicity of conspiracy theories.)

The Wieambilla inquest report avoids the simple narrative that we can fully neutralise future risk of extreme violence by tweaking a few policies here and there. This is not a failure to grapple with the issues, but a clear-eyed understanding of the complexities that brought us here and the solutions that can help.

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[VaughanJB]

There is a conversation taking place elsewhere about online behavior, and it's legality.

The world is a changed place. The internet has changed how we communicate, spread ideas, discuss and plan. Social Media and so called "alternative media" has radicalized a lot of people into extreme views. They all sell the politics of hate, where anyone who thinks differently is somehow bad or evil, and certainly due scorn.

The question is, if I post a comment saying I'm going to murder my neighbor this evening, is that cause for an investigation, or an alert to authorities, or should it be considered consequential? If we're going to save lives, we need to be proactive, so where's the line?

There was a recent story I was looking at of a young man who killed his father. He severed his fathers head and held it up on Social Media to brag about what he'd done. This, sadly, is the new dawn we have woken too.

The internet has been with us for some time now, and for most of that run it was a lawless, do anything you like, world. It was always inevitable that it would slowly be consumed by national laws and regulations. As the line between face-to-face communication and online talk blurs and merges, controls were bound to come into place.

We're also seeing moves by governments to hold platforms responsible for what they do. This topic won't go away, and we will see an alignment of national and local laws with the internet as time passes. Not because we need to worry about every single thing people post, but because of the extremists who have lost the plot.

 

[David777]

Societies have given the rise of Internet extreme violence, drug use, moral cesspools, and pornography, a chance to see what they would do, and as expected given $$$ factors, it was a race to the bottom and most gross. So now we know, thus societies should embrace reasonable restrictions from absolute freedoms, regardless of how unrestrained rights advocates argue. They've had their chance, shown the world, so no excuses.

 

[Paco Dennis]

Societies have given the rise of Internet extreme violence, drug use, moral cesspools, and pornography, a chance to see what they would do, and as expected given $$$ factors, it was a race to the bottom and most gross. So now we know, thus societies should embrace reasonable restrictions from absolute freedoms, regardless of how unrestrained rights advocates argue. They've had their chance, shown the world, so no excuses.

Then, "How dirty are you?" Becomes the issue. That is how and why "it" is an endless dance of "dogs and ponies".

 

[David777]

Most of we citizens won't shed any tears if that line on the public Interenet is rather broad, as those willing to go the extra distance will still be able to access whatever as it was in the past with paper media. Same thing with too easy access, abusable drugs.