Dr. James Madero talks about the Violence Prevention Institute: Halting Violence in Schools & Workplaces
April 4, 2007 - Dr. James N. Madero, Professor in the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University, was recently interviewed by Staff Writer Maria Brock Schulman. Q: You are heavily involved in the field of Workplace Violence prevention, having co-written “Preventing Workplace Violence,” co-founded the Violence Prevention Institute and consulted to major corporations and organizations. How did you become involved in this field? | 
| | Dr. James N. Madero | A: I was teaching the Dissertation Course in United States International University’s (USIU) doctoral degree programs in the Spring of 1993. We teach a course here on how to do a dissertation. At the time, the United States Postal Service was attracting a great deal of attention from the media because of a number of homicides that were being committed by some of its employees. The term ‘going postal’ was one of the results of this media exposure.
One of USIU’s doctoral students was writing the first book on workplace violence prevention as his dissertation. He had also started a workplace violence prevention consulting firm in January 1993. In April 1993, he asked me if I would like to do some part-time consulting for his firm. I agreed to do so.
I had never worked in corporate America before, but I found the transition from clinical work to organizational relatively easy. Developing workplace violence prevention training programs was much like putting a course together. Delivering workplace violence training to managers, supervisors and employees was similar to teaching in the classroom. Conducting threat assessment evaluations involved psychological assessment skills and experience. Psychological assessment was my specialization. By 1993, I had conducted over 3000 psychological assessments.
Q: You joined United States International University faculty in 1981, serving as the Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral program until the merger that formed Alliant in 2001. For several years, you served as Assistant Dean in the School of Human Behavior. You also chaired dissertations and taught both graduate and undergraduate classes. When did you find time to found the Violence Prevention Institute? A: I was able to found the Violence Prevention Institute in partnership with several psychologists and a former corporate security director. Together we started the Violence Prevention Institute, and since its founding, I have been consulting on a part-time basis to companies and organizations in both the public and private sectors.
Q: You’ve conducted over 1300 threat assessments of potentially violent employees for a number of organizations, including government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. What are some of the tell-tale signs or warning signs that are associated with serious incidents of workplace violence? A: There are a number of behavior patterns and warning signs. For instance, half the homicides in the workplace are committed by people who are depressed, and/or have a serious substance abuse problem. Domestic violence and romantic triangles in the workplace sometimes result in serious harm and even homicides. In many instances, there are warning signs that are sometimes overlooked or responded to incorrectly. It is very rare to find an incident of workplace violence that wasn’t preceded by one or more warning signs. Companies and organizations that have a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program are generally able to identify and respond to the warning signs and prevent a homicide from occurring in the workplace. Most of the workplace homicides that are presently committed by employees or former employees tend to occur in companies and organizations that don’t have a workplace violence prevention program.
Q: What’s the worst case of workplace violence you’ve heard of? A: The worst employee generated case occurred in the late 1970’s. An airline employee who had been terminated managed to by-pass security and get on an airplane with a loaded gun. He subsequently killed the flight crew, and the plane crashed killing all 46 people who were on board. Q: How does one prevent workplace violence?
A: The best way is to develop and implement the type of comprehensive prevention program that is outlined in our book “Preventing Workplace Violence, A Decision-Maker’s Guide to Implementing Best Practices." There are seven key areas to follow. Among the most important is to put together a Workplace Violence Prevention Team with members from the legal, human resources and security departments of the company or organization. The team should be trained by an expert in workplace violence prevention and threat assessment. That expert should then be either a member of the team or available to the team as a consultant.
Q: How does your expertise come into play when consulting with companies and organizations?
A: I’ll give you an example. I consulted on a case involving a husband who was threatening to come to his wife’s place of work and kill his wife and a co-worker because he thought they were having an affair. This put the lives of everyone at this workplace in jeopardy. The wife and co-worker denied having an affair. However, I was able to use my expertise and experience in a manner that resulted in the co-worker acknowledging that an affair had taken place, and managing the incident to a conclusion that eliminated the threat to everyone involved.
Q: What are you working on right now?
A: I’m working on a national school safety initiative that will include establishing a school safety institute at Alliant. This institute’s work will include reducing the amount of violence in our nation’s schools and helping preventing tragedies such as the one that took fifteen lives Columbine High School in April 1999.
I’m working with a group of Alliant graduate students and several psychologists to develop a comprehensive school violence prevention program that is based on the workplace violence prevention training program described in our book on preventing workplace violence. We hope to pilot the program this year and then launch it in 2008 before the end of the year at no cost to the university. At the present, there is an Alliant PsyD Clinical Psychology graduate student named Jodi Orcutt, whose dissertation involves writing a book on “Preventing School Violence.” This book will become an important part of the school violence prevention initiative.
Q: You are on the Board of Directors for The Institute for Behavioral Assessment and Research (IBAR), Alliant’s newest research institute. How did you get involved with IBAR?
A: Dr. Diana Everstine, the President of Behaviordata, Inc. in Cupertino, California, and a CSPP alumna, was instrumental in developing IBAR. The institute will provide archival data for faculty research and student dissertations. IBAR will contain one of the largest psychological testing and assessment data bases in the country. I am a member of IBAR’s Board of Directors and will directing Alliant’s doctoral students as they utilize the IBAR database to do their doctoral dissertations. For More Information
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