Fanning the flames - What makes the arsonists tick?

Amid suspicions that some of Australia's bushfires were deliberately started, Jon Henley examines arson pyschology

Police suspect several of the 400-plus bushfires that have devastated Victoria state in Australia are the work of arsonists. The same was true of last November's wildfires in California, and of the blazes that ravaged large areas of southern Greece two summers ago. One of the world's fastest-growing crimes (up 135% in Britain from 1990 to 2000), it is also among the least detected and the costliest: in the UK, fewer than 8% of the 100,000-plus maliciously lit fires each year end in prosecution, while arson is estimated to cost our economy some £2bn annually.

So who are the arsonists, and what drives them?

The Home Office's Arson Scoping Study defines four primary motivations: youth disorder and nuisance; malicious; psychological; and criminal. The first covers vandalism, boredom and thrill-seeking. In Britain, it accounts for 80% of all cases and is generally spur-of-the-moment, targeting empty property such as schools or abandoned cars.

Some 5% of arson cases are malicious: fires set through revenge (against a partner or family member), retaliation (against an institution or an employer), rivalry, racism, or clashes of belief. An even smaller percentage of arsonists have psychological problems; about two in every hundred convicted arsonists in Britain receive a court hospital order each year, while about 10% of those arrested are considered mentally ill. Genuine pyromania (an "unnatural fascination" with fire; deliberate and repeated fire-setting; arousal prior to the crime and intense gratification afterwards) is very rare.

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