Firesetting has significant social and financial consequences. Firesetters are deemed a dangerous group with a poor prognosis. The existing literature has focused on describing the characteristics of firesetters and developing typologies. The psychological understanding of firesetting is limited. Implicit theories are underlying causal theories. Positioned within a social cognitive framework they are thought to be the intervening process between observable stimuli and responses which enable individuals to make sense of their social world and make predictions within it. The identification of implicit theories has contributed to the understanding of the way information processing is carried out by other offender groups. This study aimed to explore the implicit theories held by male firesetters in secure forensic psychiatric services. Using grounded theory methodology, interviews were conducted with nine men with a history of firesetting. Six implicit theories were generated: malevolent world, uncontrollable world, violence is normal, accountability, fire is controllable and fire is a powerful tool. These implicit theories have the potential to be utilised as treatment targets by challenging and restructuring them. Future research should focus on exploring the specific implicit theories at different points in the offense process, those held by subtypes of firesetters, and those held by female firesetters.

Deliberately lit fires make up over 15% of all fires in New Zealand buildings yet they are typically omitted from the design brief for fire engineering purposes. This report examines where deliberately lit fires should be included as part of the fire engineering design by examination of all deliberately lit fires recorded in the New Zealand Fire Incident Reporting System (NZ FIRS) between the years 1996 and 2006. The main types of buildings identified where consideration of deliberately lit fires within the design would provide benefits are: · Prisons · Psychiatric institutions · Schools · Crowd activities · Attached accommodation The report also examined what is required to include deliberately lit fires as part of the design process. Based on an analysis of the fire incident statistics, the majority of deliberately lit fires are the result of unplanned activities and existing design fires will be adequate. Two critical fire scenarios were identified as exceeding these requirements, the ignition of multiple fires and the use of accelerants. Greater life safety benefits are obtained by considering accelerants. In the case of multiple fires, each fire is likely to be within the capabilities of a fire engineered building however a number of such fires may overwhelm the fire protection features of a building. A number of issues for the fire engineer to consider are briefly discussed. In the case of accelerants, a number of experiments were completed to characterise the heat release rate and species production of a Molotov cocktail based on the fuel volume used. A second round of experiments extended this work by examining the scenario where a Molotov cocktail containing 1000 milliliters of petrol was deployed within a stairwell.

Thesis (M.E.F.E.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-202). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Michigan State University. School of Criminal Justice, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Aug. 5, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p.158-160). Also issued in print.

Thesis of (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 31, 2009). "Fall, 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduates Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

This study investigated the antecedents and psychological processes inherent in firesetting within an adult intellectually disabled population. A qualitative methodology, grounded theory (GT) was employed to explore the experience of firesetting through verbal self-report. A sample of eight males with mild intellectual disabilities under the care of forensic learning disability services participated in interviews which ranged from 27 minutes 14 seconds to 1 hour 21 minutes 22 seconds. The data produced a preliminary GT which identified eight conceptual categories: Managing internal affect states, the experience of adversity, unsafe others, engagement in multiple offending behaviours, voice entitlement, experiences of fire, and mediators of risk and the function of firesetting. These conceptual categories were linked by an overarching core category of ‘powerlessness’ which was evident in several areas of the participants’ lives and experiences of firesetting. It was concluded that this sense of powerlessness along with the conceptual categories should be considered when risk assessing, delivering firesetting specific treatment and psychological interventions. The clinical implications are discussed and suggestions are made for replication of the current study with larger, more diverse samples and future directions for further research are proposed.

The theme of the thesis is psychological offender profiling and the possibilities that it offers in the investigation of arson cases. First it introduces profiling as an investigation method, including its history, the sources on which it is based, what kind of information it contains and how it is created. Next it follows up the problematic issue of fires, their investigation and the classification of intentionally set fires. It also introduces some particular arsonist offender subtypes. Then it pursues the arson profiling and introduces the main profiling approaches. In the end, the author applies the acquired findings to analyze two arson cases according to the particular profiling approaches and then compares the provided leads to a possible offender.

The detection and identification of the oxygenated class of ignitable liquids is a complex issue for the fire debris analyst. The oxygenated compounds are difficult to recover using traditional analytical techniques since their chemical characteristics are vastly different from those of the petroleum products that compose the majority of the ignitable liquid classes. Previous research has demonstrated that the use of zeolite 13X as an adsorbent in heated passive headspace concentration provides increased recovery of oxygenated compounds in comparison to the conventional activated charcoal adsorbent. This hypothesis was further tested in this work using more realistic casework scenarios. Various carpet, carpet padding and wood types were utilized in a number of burn conditions in order to determine if any substrate interferences were present; as well as to monitor the recovery of oxygenated compounds from these substrates using the proposed zeolite extraction method. The substrates explored did not contribute significant background interference to complicate the identification of the oxygenated compounds. In addition, small volumes of the oxygenated ignitable liquids were easily recovered and identified from all burn states using the zeolite method. A dual-mode extraction with both zeolites and activated charcoal strips as adsorbents was utilized with mixtures of oxygenated compounds and petroleum products to determine if a variety of ignitable liquid classes could be detected and identified in the presence of a variety of substrate matrices within a single extraction protocol. The dual-mode extraction showed that both the oxygenated compounds and petroleum products could be detected and identified using a single extraction protocol in the presence of various substrate matrices. Lastly, an experiment was devised to compare the recovery of the oxygenated compounds using various total available surface areas of both zeolites and activated charcoal strips in order to determine which adsorbent exhibits a greater recovery when all other experimental conditions remain constant. When the surface areas were equalized between the zeolites and activated charcoal strips, the activated charcoal exhibited a greater recovery of the oxygenated compounds. However, the cost effectiveness of the zeolites allows for a greater amount of zeolite beads to be used in order to achieve the same recovery as the activated charcoal strips for a much lower price. Therefore, the findings from this work, in combination with previous research, continue to support the use of zeolite 13X as an alternative adsorbent for the recovery of oxygenated ignitable liquids from fire debris evidence.

<p>This thesis falls within the category of historical studies that is concerned with a difficult legacy of South Africa̕s liberation struggle, namely the practice of necklacing that accompanied it. My interest in the practice is limited to its emergence and politicising as it relates to the ANC, the UDF and the apartheid state. The ANC and the UDF overwhelmingly understood the practice as resistance, yet ambivalently so. The question guiding this thesis therefore asks: how is necklacing written into the narrative of struggle history? Here I refer to its (re)representation, its (re)characterisation, its (re)articulation in a wider discursive war of propaganda strategies that was waged through the interplay of an apartheid state discourse and what I consider to be an official non-state discourse, that of the ANC and the UDF.</p>

<p>This thesis falls within the category of historical studies that is concerned with a difficult legacy of South Africa̕s liberation struggle, namely the practice of necklacing that accompanied it. My interest in the practice is limited to its emergence and politicising as it relates to the ANC, the UDF and the apartheid state. The ANC and the UDF overwhelmingly understood the practice as resistance, yet ambivalently so. The question guiding this thesis therefore asks: how is necklacing written into the narrative of struggle history? Here I refer to its (re)representation, its (re)characterisation, its (re)articulation in a wider discursive war of propaganda strategies that was waged through the interplay of an apartheid state discourse and what I consider to be an official non-state discourse, that of the ANC and the UDF.</p>