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This chapter explores the issue of workplace violence, including its definition, prevalence, and impact. It discusses different types of offenders, victim-offender relationships, and motivations behind workplace violence.
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Forensic Victimology 2nd Edition Chapter Twelve: Workplace Violence
Workplace Violence • Violence refers to acts that involve force, harm, or threat of harm by one person against another. • Workplace violence is defined as violence or the threat of violence against workers. • While incidents of workplace violence do not appear to be on the rise, society is paying greater attention to the problem.
Workplace Violence • The significant toll exerted by workplace violence cannot be understated. Consider the following statistics: • One out of every four employees will be a victim of workplace violence during their life. • One out of every six violent crimes occurs in the workplace. • As an occupational health hazard, homicide is the second leading cause of death, accounting for one sixth of all occupational fatalities. • Every year, 1000 people are murdered in the workplace and another 1.5 to 2 million are victims of assault, rape, or robbery.
Nomothetic Analysis • Contextual victim statistics and likelihoods are interesting and important for developing case theories and establishing risk or exposure factors in some instances. • Examples of these statistics, as reported in Harrell (2011), include the following: • Between 2002-2009, the rate of nonfatal workplace violence declined by 35%. • From 2005-2009, law enforcement officers, security guards and bartenders had the highest rate of workplace violence.
Nomothetic Analysis • Continued: • With respect to homicides in the workplace between 2005-2009, about 28% of victims were in sales and related occupations, while 17% of victims were in protective service occupations. • From 2005-2009, approximately 70% of homicides in the workplace were committed by robbers and other attackers, however about 21% were committed by workplace “associates”. • From 2005-2009, firearms were used in 5% of nonfatal workplace violence. • It is important to note that grouped and averaged data is abstract. It does not represent particular victims that exist in the real world.
Domestic Violence • The consequences of domestic violence impact every aspect of the victim’s life, including their employment. • Domestic violence creates particular challenges for employers with respect to employee safety and any related liability.
Idiographic Analysis • Idiographic victim analysis focuses on specific cases and the unique traits or functioning of the individuals involved. • Targets • Every offender has a particular victim or target criteria that satisfies their needs. • Victim selection refers to the process that is used by an offender to choose their intended victim or victims • There are essentially three kinds of targets: primary, secondary, and collateral.
Idiographic Analysis • Primary target: • One that is of the greatest importance to the offender. It dictates the location and timing of an attack. • In workplace violence cases, the primary target (victim) will be known to the offender; the connection between them will be personal. • Secondary target: • One that is of lesser importance to the offender. It will not dictate the location and timing of the attack. However, it will be a conscious choice based on the availability within environmental and temporal constraints dictated by primary targets. • In workplace violence cases, secondary targets will be representative of the primary target.
Idiographic Analysis • Collateral victims: • One that is attacked and injured unintentionally, because of their proximity to a primary or secondary target within a given environment. • In workplace violence cases, collateral victims will be hit simply because they are in the way.
The Victim-Offender Relationship • In each case, the relationship between the victim and the offender should be established. • According to Loveless (2001), these are four types of workplace violence offenders with respect to their relationship to the workplace itself: • Criminal Intent (Type I) – The perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employees, and is usually committing a crime in conjunction with the violence. • Customer/Client (Type II) – The perpetrator has a legitimate relationship with the business and becomes violence while being served by the business.
The Victim-Offender Relationship • Worker-on-Worker (Type III) – The perpetrator is an employee or past employee of the business who attacks or threatens another employee(s) or past employee(s) in the workplace. • Personal Relationship (Type IV) – The perpetrator usually does not have a relationship with the business but has a personal relationship with the intended victim. • In application these categories are oversimplified, and a single incident may contain more than one relationship, especially when multiple victims are involved.
Motivation • Motive is comprised of the emotional, psychological, and material needs that impel and are satisfied by behavior, while intent is the specific aim that guides behavior. • The available motives for workplace violence are no different than for any type of violence. They include the service of profit, anger, power, sadism, with no bright yellow line between them.
