Gérard Labuschagne

Past-President

Professor Gérard Labuschagne PhD is a Director of L&S Threat Management, a workplace violence threat assessment, and management consultancy.

He was the Section Head of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) specialised Investigative Psychology Section (IPS) for 14 years and resigned on the rank of a Brigadier. Prior to joining the South African Police Service in October 2001, he was employed as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital in Pretoria. During the same time, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pretoria.

He is a Clinical Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the British Psychological Society, and a criminologist. Gérard is an admitted Advocate of the High Court, a trained homicide investigator by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and was trained as a hostage negotiator by the SAPS. Gérard is one of only two US Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) Certified Threat Managers (CTM) from the African continent, of which there are only 130 CTMs worldwide.

Gérard is also the President of the African Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (AfATAP) which was founded in 2019, to promote the profession of threat assessment on the African continent.

He is on the editorial board for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling and the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, and a fellow of the International Academy of Investigative Psychology. He was an adjunct faculty member of the California School of Forensic Studies at Alliant International University in the USA for 9 years. He was also a Professor Extraordinarius at the Department of Police Practice at UNISA from 2013 to 2016, and before that at the Department of Criminology also at UNISA.

He currently holds an Honorary Associate Professorship in the Division of Forensic Medicine and Pathology at WITS University.

He holds a Diploma in Criminal Justice and Forensic Auditing obtained from the then Rand Afrikaans University, a Bachelors Degree Majoring in Psychology and Criminology from the University of Pretoria, an Honours Degree in Psychology from the University of Pretoria, an LLB from UNISA, a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pretoria, a Masters Degree in Criminology from the University of Pretoria, and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Pretoria.