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Groups have a powerful influence on the behaviour of individuals through norms and values, modelling, and group identification. When the group becomes violent — whether it is gangs, organized crime, extremists, or even sports fans — there are unique and changing risk factors and systemic processes that need to be considered.
Unfortunately, there is no consensus or professionally accepted way to approach risk assessments for group-based violence. The challenge is that the research in this area is limited. And no surveys have been conducted on how professionals approach these assessments.
Dr. Alana Cook spoke about how professionals can approach risk assessment in this area during her presentation for the International Forensic Psychiatry Lecture Series. (You can watch a recording of her January 30, 2025, lecture Risk Assessment Applications for Gangs and Organized Crime online.)
What Group-Based Violence Is
Violence is defined as actual, attempted, or threatened physical injury that is deliberate and non-consensual. In group-based violence, the individual’s decisions and behaviours are influenced by a group they belong to, are affiliated with, or identify with.
As well as looking at the individual, forensic mental health professionals need to broaden their thinking to include how the group influences the individual’s behaviour. Dr. Cook also suggests considering the group’s norms and values, and how it interacts with and is influenced by society.
Risk Factors for Group-Based Violence
Dr. Cook, Dr. Stephen Hart, and Dr. Randy Kropp developed the Multilevel Guidelines for the Assessment and Management of Group-Based Violence (MLG) to help forensic evaluators systematically and transparently think about the breadth of influences on risk. The MLG is one of several structured professional judgment tools to assess group-based violence. It uses four nested domains: Individual, Individual–Group, Group, and Group–Societal.
The Individual domain evaluates an individual’s problems separate from the group:
- conduct (for example, group-based violence, other violence),
- attitudes (for example, pro-violent, antisocial, anti-authority),
- social adjustments (for example, intimate and non-intimate relationships, education, employment), and
- mental health (for example, severe mental illness, personality disorder, substance use, trauma).
The Individual–Group domain evaluates how the group influences the individual and the relationship between the two. Risk factors include having a:
- strong group-based identity,
- violent role or status in the group,
- strong commitment to the group, and
- negative attitude toward people outside the group.
In the next level up, the Group domain looks at the group separately from the individual. The risk evaluation considers the group’s:
- history of violence,
- violent norms and goals,
- strong cohesion, and
- strong leadership structure and power dynamics.
However, if the person is not a group member yet, has been pushed out by the group, or has no affiliation, then the Group domain may become less important.
Lastly, the Group–Societal domain examines how the group functions in society and with other groups. Forensic mental health professionals need to consider the importance of the local functioning of the group, like the neighbourhood or city the group is in, or even the influence of global events and how that might impact risk. This domain considers whether the group is:
- large in size and scope,
- socially isolated or isolative,
- in an unstable context or environment, and
- threatened by or in conflict with other groups.
Deciding What to Use
The MLG does not yet have validation studies done with the rigour one would expect for violence risk assessment tools. However, research has demonstrated support for the ability of raters to have similar ratings using the tool for various types of group violence. While there is variability in the quality and quantity of research to support the items in the guidelines, the domains are generally well supported.
An informal search of recent criminal cases in Canada found various tools that forensic mental health professionals use. These included well-supported general-violence risk assessment measures like the Historical Clinical Risk Management-20 (HCR-20), Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG), and Structured Assessment of PROtective Factors for violence risk (SAPROF), as well as unstructured judgments. Dr. Cook acknowledged that researchers have validated the HCR-20 and VRAG in large correctional samples that included some members of gangs and organized crime organizations. However, she suggests those tools do not account for the group-level influences and may miss critical information related to group-based violence risk.
Dr. Cook emphasized that like the MLG, no other tool for this area of practice is well-accepted and strongly validated for use. Forensic mental health professionals are challenged to conduct these assessments with little guidance on how to approach the assessment or what tools to use in practice. To help professionals make thoughtful and defensible decisions, Dr. Cook suggests evaluators:
- Review the development and validity of the tools you are going to use.
- Determine if your method systematically and transparently considers all levels of impact.
- Consider if you have a reliable source of information for the Group-level factors.
- Clearly state the limitations to your opinions because of the limited validation research.
- Consider if your method is consistent with professional best practices.
Written by Virginia St-Denis and approved by Dr. Alana N. Cook.
