Critical Incident Management
After this nation was served a tremendous blow that fateful day in September 2001, many agencies were unable to phantom that such a horrible event could take place on American soil. Many agencies didn't know what to do, or who should start in the search and rescue efforts. Because of this event, critical incident had to take center stage and many agencies under the umbrella of criminal justice, including but not limited to, firefighters, Sheriff's, CIA, Homeland Security, and other individuals had to create and follow specific rules to maintain order during an event that causes chaos amongst the citizens of the community. In this paper, we are going to examine what critical incident management is, as well as discussing the scenario-based planning and how it applies to institutional strategic management within criminal justice and private security organizations.
Understanding Critical Incident Management
Critical Incident is a traumatic event, or the threat of such (within or outside Australia) which has the potential to harm life or well-being and causes extreme stress, fear or injury to the person experiencing or witnessing the event. Post-Incident Debriefing is a formal group process conducted by a professionally qualified person, to alleviate the pressure after a critical incident. Traumatic Stress is an actual or threatened event such as death, serious injury, human suffering or violence, such as accidents, including fatalities or near misses, assault (verbal or physical, including threats), robbery and serious physical injury (UniSA, 2011).
A critical incident can also be an incident or happening that is outside the realm of what a person considers normal in their daily routine. For instance, when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, the citizens were horrified when the second plane hit. Witnesses to the fact