Some serious events end lethally while others do not. This study examined to what extent a selected number of event characteristics and actors’ behaviour contributed to the escalation of an event into a lethal outcome. We examined Dutch court files of 267 serious events in which offenders were convicted for either lethal violence (homicide, N=126) or non-lethal violence (attempted homicide, N=141). Pronounced differences were found between lethal versus non-lethal events with respect to event characteristics and to actors’ behaviour during the incident in particular. In particular, the likelihood of a lethal outcome increased in events involving alcohol use by victims, firearm use by offenders, victim precipitation and the absence of third parties.

Having a job is an all day reality, having a job in a prison or a forensic psychiatric hospital is not. Dealing on a daily basis with disturbed people who have committed a severe crime requires a highly professional attitude. For the professional working in this field, individual thoughts and feelings (of disgust of the criminal and his crime for example, so common amongst the public) are not an option, while at the same time the given means for doing the work are highly dependent on public opinion as expressed by the media and political spokesmen. Ed Brand, forensic psychologist for more than thirty years, describes the change in risk management which took place in those years on the social and political level in the treatment of psychiatric disturbed offenders. In his account he also refers to the changes in his personal life before he stopped his work in state prisons and forensic psychiatric hospitals.