The CTAP, a Threat Assessment Tool for the Initial Evaluation of Concerning or Threatening Communications: Development and Inter-Rater Reliability

Best practice in threat assessment requires the use of standardised, evidence-based tools to assist in case formulation. Considerable numbers of such tools have been developed for use in risk assessment in criminal justice, mental health and community settings: instruments have been published for the threat assessment of cases in specific areas, such as workplace violence, school violence, stalking, and terrorism. However, there has been less attention to a more general and common problem faced regularly by politicians, public companies, those in the talent industry, and others in the public eye. That is how the recipients of problematic or threatening communications can judge which of these need referral to security departments or police for further investigation; and how agencies receiving such referrals can reach initial conclusions as to which cases require prioritisation and which do not. Relevant risks in this area concern not simply violence, the focus of most threat assessment instruments, but also persistence, escalation, disruption of function, reputational damage, financial loss, and psychological harm. The Communications Threat Assessment Protocol (CTAP) is a structured professional judgement tool for the initial threat assessment of unwanted communications, designed to fill this gap. This article details the background to the CTAP and its development into a manualised threat assessment instrument for use both in the private sphere and in policing contexts. It reports the first evaluation of the reliability of the CTAP. The results of this study are promising in terms of the use of CTAP in the initial assessment of problematic communications. Public Significance Statement When people in public life receive bizarre or threatening communications, some form of system is needed to help them divide these into ones to bin and ones that need further examination by security departments or police. Further, such departments need a means to make an initial threat assessment in order to triage such referrals-and one that can be done quickly in response to limited information. The Communications Threat Assessment Protocol provides such a system, the background to which and reliability of which is illustrated in this paper.