Logic of Violence Steps 1-3 of 6

This post is a cheat. I'm chatting with someone about crime and responses to crime and got tired of typing in the little box. And the conversation requires some shared language.

When we do Logic of Violence it starts with the Violence Dynamics talk, which I've written and talked about it until I'm sick of it. The Maslow perspective.

This gives us motivations for violence-- fear (Survival level); Stuff (resource predator, Security level on Maslow); the social motivations (status-membership-territory-protocols); or pleasure (process predators, Self-actualized on Maslow.)

The next is understanding the violent people have goals and parameters. What they want and what they don't want. The goal will determine the type of crime. If you need money to feed an addiction, your choices are theft, burglary, robbery-- stuff like that. If you get off on seeing  a woman crying and begging, assault and rape. Those are goals.

The parameters, commonly, include not getting hurt, not getting arrested, not losing your reputation (especially if you are active in a criminal subculture) and in some cases violent people will respond very violently to attacks on their egos.

In LoV, we hit the following six questions from the criminal point of view, so each person by the end of the day has played Design-a-Crime. Only after do we go back over the list with an eye to prevention. For this essay, it's going to be mixed.

Question 1: Who? Certain people make better targets for certain types of crime than others. If it's about money, out-of-town business men and tourists tend to carry cash and equipment and generally won't fly back to testify. Before direct deposit, the day the social security checks arrived each month was hunting season on the elderly. If the motivation is rape, it varies. For some it's people who remind the perpetrator of someone in the past. Or it could be any target of opportunity. Or a specific type (one of the reasons why dressing down or trying to appear unattractive isn't a successful strategy). If the goal is simple bullying, the threat seeks out emotionally labile victims. Etc.

In the risk/reward equation that the threat does, if you can honestly discern what visible rewards you might offer and the apparent risk you represent, you can get a good handle on your victim profile. I have enough gray in the beard that Monkey Dancing shouldn't happen. I'm nobody's idea of a good time for abduction rape. I'm middle-aged with a limp when I'm tired and that moves me up the list for simple muggings...

Question 2: Where? Whatever your preferred victim profile, they congregate somewhere. Out of town businessmen can be found at the convention center, hotel bars and strip clubs. Tourists congregate where there is stuff to see. If you target college-age women, they can be found on campus...

These are target selection sites, not necessarily where the crimes will happen. Pick-pocketing, sure. But the asocial violent stuff requires privacy

Question 3: Ripeness? I should find a better word, but these are all the behavioral clues that indicate which of your preferred targets will be easiest to take. You have a bar full of out-of-town businessmen (or college girls)-- who do you pick? Alone, distracted, slobbering drunk, anxious to please, weak, awkward... We all have good predatory instincts. Bad guys are bad guys because they act on them.

Questions 1-3 are the heart of prevention. And in this instant, prevention is tons better than response. Things only get worse from here and your options decrease. To whatever extent possible, stay off the first list. You don't get choices in most of it, but you can be a tourist without looking like a tourist. You don't have a choice about your size and old age comes to everyone lucky enough to survive. But at almost any age you can still move like an athlete.
The second list of places-- you're going to go to those places sometimes, but know to keep your guard up and your eyes open. Wild animals don't get complacent approaching a watering hole. Neither should you.
The third list is where all of that self-defense advice comes from-- walk like you have purpose; don't have headphones in when jogging in remote areas; don't text and walk; don't pull out a map and look lost...

That's enough for one day. Steps 4-6 tomorrow.