Professor Theresa Gannon
Appearances
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
It's actually really, really unusual for someone to use fire to actually kill another human being. It's really unusual. I can think of probably two or three examples in my whole career. And I started working in fire setting over 15 years ago now.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
Everyone presumes that people set deliberate fires or try and harm people with deliberate fires or warn people off or, you know, send a message about their own distress. because they're inappropriately interested in fire.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
And quickly, I became interested in the fact that some of the people I was coming across in clinical assessment and treatment, they didn't have an inappropriate interest in fire, but they were still using it.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
The field is probably about 20 years behind other fields of criminal behaviour, such as our understanding of sexual offending or violence. There are well over 200 risk assessment tools for people who've committed violence and there are no properly developed risk assessment tools for people who've set deliberate fires. In fact, that's something I'm currently working on.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
It talks about this theory, the idea of fire setting scripts. Now, all of us, you and me, have a script about fire. And what that means is it's a cognitive rule that we learn, usually as children, about how and when fire should be used. With people who set deliberate fires, what we propose is that they have learnt an inappropriate fire script.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
But I would argue that some individuals may learn that fire is the best way to instill fear or to punish another person for a a supposed wrongdoing.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
You show fire to any animal, it will kind of back away. You know what I mean? It's very powerful and evolutionary-wise, we're kind of programmed to be scared of it.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
And these are individuals characterized by two kind of prominent factors. They've got offensive, supportive attitudes that support criminal behavior and also inappropriate fire interest. So they're really interested in fires and they're really pro-criminal behavior.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
And I would argue that the case that you've been talking about sits somewhere between the multifaceted, the last one I just mentioned, and the grievance subtype, but maybe doesn't fit them exactly. It shows you the breadth of motivators lying behind fire setting.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
If you don't want to admit to yourself that you set the fire or committed the crime or whatever. Also, you can lose a significant amount of social support if you do admit that you did do it. So by remaining in denial, you know, you still get visitors or people still believe you might not have done it.
Sword and Scale
Episode 289
Whereas as soon as you admit it, of course, you might lose the last remnants of social support that you have.