¶ … people use threatening language, in what context, and when threatening words are a precursor to violence.
Words can hurt, but at what point to the words actually precede a violent act. Many times a person will threaten violent action, but their hand will be staid by some unknown factor. The actual act is a function of both the threatener's intent and the strength of their desire to carry out the action (Jameson, 2004). Threat is accomplished in both the words that are used and the attitude with which they are presented (Erbert & Floyd, 2004). It is not the use of threatening words then as much as how the user, at first, intends them to be heard.
The best definition of threat may be one that the Supreme Court uses to determine if language is a "true threat" (Rothman, 2001) or not. Courts deem that unless a threat is truly intended to cause harm it is protected by the first amendment of the Constitution. What the court has determined is that a true threat the "reasonable speaker" or "reasonable listener" test (Rothman, 2001). "These tests essentially amount to an evaluation of whether or not a reasonable recipient of the statement would believe it constituted a threat" (Rothman, 2001). However, this, in and of itself, is not a helpful definition since even the different district courts differ in their determination of reasonable, and the Supreme Court has never chose to define what a reasonable person and an unreasonable person are.
Threatening...
In many cases of threat, communication from the perpetrator is often the only piece of information available against the offender and for this reason, researchers are now trying to figure out if communication can reveal offender's psycho-pathy and the degree to which he/she can be dangerous to the target. Our research shows that some physiological reactions during the threat giving incident would also say a great deal about escalation
99). Brewster (2000), looking specifically at the question of how threatening language and physical violence are related in intimate relationships. Looking at hundreds of individuals involved in intimate relationships that included verbal threats, some of which went on to include physical violence, she also found that there is a clear cycle of dynamics between the individuals, in which verbal threats generally intermingle with physical violence and in which certain
Certainly, an incarceration, simple arrest, questioning, or data gathering on individuals such as wire taps would produce a plethora of data that could be used the statistical analysis of potential, real, or existing threats. Some individuals are under surveillance or incarceration for extended periods of time (such as gang leaders, Mafiosi, etc.) and would provide a huge quantity of analyzable data that could be fed to the National Center for
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