Dr Nichola Tyler comes here from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, where she began her research into firesetting with Victoria University of Wellington alumna Professor Theresa Gannon. “I started my research in this area, interviewing men and women residing in mental health hospitals and talking to them about why they had set a fire, how they had come to set a fire, and what else was going on in their life at that time, and my interest was piqued.”
Dr Tyler says New Zealand has only one other academic working on firesetting research, at the University of Auckland, whose work focuses on young people. Dr Tyler specialises in adult firesetting, saying, “Fires started by young people only account for around half of all the fires that are set, however, they’ve attracted the most attention research-wise.”
“One thing that attracted me to teaching and research at Victoria University of Wellington was that they have a really excellent Psychology department which is very internationally facing. It also has the only postgraduate Master’s programme in Forensic Psychology in New Zealand,” she says.
“The most surprising thing I’ve found since beginning my research in this area is just how under-recognised deliberate firesetting is. This behaviour is more prevalent and problematic than has previously been realised. You notice how frequently the reports in the news are coming up.
“The other fascinating factor for me is that there isn’t an international response to it. It is a very poorly understood behaviour, there are a lot of questions still to answer.”
Dr Tyler and her UK-based colleagues were in New Zealand two years ago, training New Zealanders on current assessment and intervention frameworks for use with adults who have set deliberate fires. Her former colleagues will join her early next year to run this training again.
Dr Tyler authored a recent paper about the need for an evidence-based approach for assessing and treating deliberate firesetting. “Often, psychologists are required to complete risk assessments for the Parole Board to say that somebody has reduced their risk of reoffending, however, at present there are not any specialist risk assessment guidelines for firesetting to help practitioners assess what someone’s risk of reoffending is. We have them for violence, sexual offending, general offending—but not firesetting.”
Dr Tyler is also calling, along with fellow researchers, for firesetting to be recognised as a public health issue rather than purely a criminal justice issue. “Public health approaches have been adopted for other types of offending behaviour: gang crime, knife crime, violent crime. Because there is ultimately a negative health outcome for someone including injury, harm, and even death.
“If we adopt a public health approach involving multiple agencies working across different disciplines, including developing and implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies, we can hopefully reduce the number of people setting fires, and reduce the overall physical and psychological harm that is being caused to the wider public by these incidents.”
Dr Tyler and her colleagues at the University, Dr Clare-Anne Fortune, Associate Professor Louise Dixon, and Dr Tia Neha recently won a tender with Fire and Engineering NZ to evaluate the facilitators and barriers to engagement with the Fire Awareness Intervention Programme (FAIP). “In New Zealand, the fire service run the FAIP intervention, with trained practitioners, for any young person under the age of 16 who has been identified for setting a fire or has been referred because they are engaging in misuse of fire.”
She says previous research has shown that the FAIP has an impact on further firesetting behaviours, but the research her team is undertaking aims to help improve the reach of the intervention through understanding why those referred accept or decline the intervention, as well as who is and who is not currently being referred.