• lgmjon64@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The crazy thing is that there’s apparently no official database that tracks that. There was just a California firefighter charged with multiple counts of arson and in the article they mention that the statistic isn’t tracked, they went on to do a database search that showed how frequent it is.

    • HairyHarry@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      There are figures that suggest a different picture, but hardly anyone knows them. In 2013, the former Schwyz public prosecutor Lorenz Müller wrote a “behavioral analysis of serial arsonists”. Based on a survey of German-speaking Swiss cantons, he examined 19 series of fires with a total of 21 perpetrators. Of these 21, three were current and one were former firefighters - their share was therefore just under 20 percent. Müller’s conclusion: the firefighter as arsonist is not “such an unjustified cliché” after all.

      translated paragraph from https://www.nzz.ch/gesellschaft/loeschen-was-der-kollege-angezuendet-hat-ld.1815687