A recent school shooting in the US state of Washington and a lone wolf’s assault on the Canadian parliament in Ottawa are but two of the latest headline-grabbing incidents of home-grown violence.

One had nothing to do with politics, the other is classified as a terrorist attack perpetrated by a jihadist Muslim.

Yet, both involved troubled young men groping with personal problems and demons. Their actions are in many ways cries of desperation in the absence of badly needed help. They beg the question whether criminalisation and stepped-up security is an effective one-stop prevention tool without developing mechanisms providing early warning and help to individuals about to go off the deep end.

…James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.