What Motivates Firesetters And How Do You Treat Them?

For almost 20 years, members of the Research Department have been studying firesetters and we've done several studies of the characteristics of and recidivism of almost 300 firesetters admitted to a maximum security psychiatric unit. Few of these men committed the kind of arson where the fire is set to defraud insurance companies. Firesetting (or arson) is an interesting crime because it presents considerable danger but the offender usually has no direct physical contact with the victim.

Our earliest work was based on a theory that firesetting is a dangerous crime committed by a person who is too shy to confront the person he wants to hurt. Several studies showed that, prior to admission, firesetters were less assertive, less attractive, less intelligent, less physically aggressive and more socially isolated than other patients.

We also conducted some laboratory tests of firesetters' social skills and found them to be quite deficient, especially when called upon to deal with conflict, express anger, and say no, again compared to other Oak Ridge patients. These were striking findings because forensic patients as a whole already scored very low on social skill and assertion and high on social isolation.

Conflict Resolution

These findings seemed to confirm our theory. It seemed that firesetters were people who got angry, couldn't express anger face-to-face and used fire as a means to be aggressive while remaining unassertive.

This work led to ideas for treating firesetters: teach them how to say no, express anger, resolve conflict and deal with criticism verbally so that they won't need to use fire to get even. For many years, we ran social skills groups for firesetters. There was, for a few years, even a formal program. We evaluated our treatment and showed that firesetter patients mastered the new skills in the therapy sessions. Also, patients' self-perceived assertion, social skill, self esteem and satisfaction improved greatly.

Evaluations by ward staff, however, showed that they rated the patients to be less socially skilled (especially by being more belligerent) after treatment. It seemed that being assertive (and especially becoming more assertive) was not adaptive for patients while in hospital. Because of the comparatively low population count and admission rates, the treatment program has dwindled so that it has now been several years since we last ran an assertion group for firesetters.

We have continued our research, however. Recent studies have shown that we can identify useful subgroups of firesetters. The largest subgroup comprised men who had lengthy psychiatric histories, and who set minor fires in response to delusions. Confirming our earlier studies, a second large subgroup were very unassertive, set fires out of anger and revenge and knew their victims. This was the group most likely to use an accelerant like gasoline to start their fire. The third group, comprising about a quarter of the firesetters, had very lengthy psychiatric histories (but were not psychotic) had set many fires as adults and children and were also quite unassertive. Finally, the smallest subgroup had lengthy criminal histories but had set few previous fires. We concluded that lack of assertion was an important clinical feature of just over half of mentally disordered firesetters. In addition, many firesetters set their fires in response to delusions while still others had set fires as part of a lengthy criminal career.

Recidivism

We also examined the recidivism of these subgroups. Interestingly, it was the criminal subgroup that were most likely to commit a new violent offense (arson was not counted as violent) while the unassertive subgroup was the least. The criminal subgroup was also most likely to set a new fire and the multiple firesetter group ran a close second.

The subgroup of unassertives was the least likely to set a new fire. Overall, we found that in predicting violent recidivism, our statistical Violence Risk Appraisal Guide worked as well as it does with unselected mentally disordered offenders. Further firesetting was related, among other things, to the number of previous fires, and how young the man was when he set his first fire. Most interestingly, and confirming our earlier studies, the man's history of physical aggression and violence was inversely related to new fire setting: the least violent men were most likely to set new fires.

Although our research on firesetting forms a small part of our operation, we still plan to pursue it. We are especially interested in trying to determine what effect our treatment has had.