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A Comparison of Email Versus Letter Threat Contacts toward Members of the United States Congress*
Author(s) -
SchoenemanMorris Katherine A.,
Scalora Mario J.,
Chang Grace H.,
Zimmerman William J.,
Garner Yancey
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007.00538.x
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , mental illness , suicide prevention , psychology , human factors and ergonomics , multivariate analysis , injury prevention , poison control , criminology , social psychology , law , psychiatry , mental health , medicine , political science , medical emergency , linguistics , philosophy
To better understand inappropriate correspondence sent to public officials, 301 letter cases and 99 email cases were randomly selected from the United States Capitol Police investigative case files and compared. Results indicate that letter writers were significantly more likely than emailers to exhibit indicators of serious mental illness (SMI), engage in target dispersion, use multiple methods of contact, and make a problematic approach toward their target. Emailers were significantly more likely than letter writers to focus on government concerns, use obscene language, and display disorganization in their writing. Also, letter writers tended to be significantly older, have more criminal history, and write longer communications. A multivariate model found that disorganization, SMI symptoms, problematic physical approach, and target dispersion significantly differentiated between the correspondence groups. The group differences illuminated by this study reveal that letter writers are engaging in behavior that is higher risk for problematic approach than are emailers.