Science can't predict mass murder

Predicting incidents of mass killings like the April 16 Virginia Tech shooting that left 33 people dead is like looking for a needle in a haystack, according to a UBC human-behaviour expert.

Sandra Robinson , associate professor at the Sauder School of Business who studied shootings in U.S. postal offices during the 1990s, said that such events are statistically rare.

"I just don't believe the science is there," Robinson told the Straight . "If we were to start identifying people that might have the potential, we'll be arresting innocent people. There's plenty of misfits, plenty of loners, plenty of strange people, plenty of people with mental illness, [but] none of these people ever commit any violent crime whatsoever."

Robinson pointed out that the closest one can get to stopping such an incident from happening is when it becomes known that somebody is expressing fantasies of mass killings or plotting to do so. "If we get a sense that there is some premeditation going on, that's a red flag that everybody should act on and take very seriously," she said. "But barring that, it's really hard."

Wendy Roth , a UBC assistant professor of sociology, coauthored the 2004 book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (Basic Books) , which looked at cases of mass shootings in American schools.

"There usually are warning signs," Roth told the Straight . "One of the challenges for institutions is to catch those signs and put those pieces together. There's a lot of information floating around about these individual students, but the people who have the information are not communicating with one another."

Roth said that one way of dealing with this is through the creation of "team teachers", wherein mentors can exchange information about students. Another means, she said, is to make counselling and support services available to all students. "Often, the shooters are the people who are under the radar," Roth said. "They're not the squeaky wheels; they're not the ones who anybody would check out and say, 'That's a troubled student.'"

Ken Denike , chair of the Vancouver school board, told the Straight that although there has not been a shooting incident in city schools, there's always a concern about somebody becoming a "copycat of some kind".

"If a teacher thinks there's a difficulty with a couple of kids, there could be an assessment of whether, 'That's just kids being kids or is it something more serious?'" he said. "Teachers are the first line of defence."

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