The Criminal Mind

By Peyton Quinn

Despite the intensity of the armored assailant fight scenarios at our RMCAT Training Center, our instruction is not limited to how to punch, kick or throw. In order to truly teach self defense in today’s world I strongly feel that no self defense program can limit it’s instruction to physical technique skills alone.

This is why I have interviewed scores of convicted killers, muggers, rapists, armed robbers and drug pushers over the last few years. We use this information at RMCAT in designing some elements of our self-defence program. Please consider that it is these criminals that are the ones that commit most of the criminal assaults and these are thus the people whose thought process you need to know something about. Armed with that knowledge you have a far better chance to avoid them and to physically defend yourself from them too. The criminal mind does not operate quite like that of the decent and socialized people that you work out with in the dojo.

At RMCAT we recently finished editing a videotape (Real Criminals, Real Crimes) of these convict interviews with a small group of convicted felons some of whom were multiple killers too. Perhaps the first thing I should mention here is that all these interviews took place out of prison as even most murderers eventually are returned to the streets.

Now, having said that the criminal predator’s mind does not work just quite like yours or mine, let me also point out a significant qualification here too. When I worked as bouncer I saw a commonality in thinking between the people who bullied and punched out others in the barroom and the grade school and high school bullies I had dealt with in my school-boy years.

Understanding the modus operandi of these barroom thugs in my work as a bouncer had ultimately allowed me to avoid most of them in the first place. Yet, I still got many of them to behave as required and without the use of violence. Later in life when I began interviewing the convicts I saw this continuum of behavioral thinking again. Indeed, I would say that if a person was too successful as a schoolyard bully then he sometimes continued and escalated this behavior until he succeeded in ending up in prison.

Finally, especially looking back on my experience in the business world with a software development company that I co-founded in the 80’s (hindsight is often 20/20) I was forced to see that it was mainly the intensity, cruelty and consequences of predator like thinking that differentiated some of the things I dealt with in the boardroom with what I had dealt with in the barroom. It was clear to me that these behavioral mechanics of predatory thinking were simply greatly distilled and amplified in the crucible of the prisons.

My point here is that understanding these predatory thought patterns has application and utility for you far beyond physical self-defense against the criminal element. Knowledge is indeed power. On the street or perhaps even at the office, if you act like a victim you will likely to be treated like one. We will be looking more specifically at what these convicts told me that they looked for in selecting a victim and also what they might see that would make them pass on someone as a suitable victim too. But I will have to save that for part two of this article. I want to close this installment with a story about a RMCAT student who is a fairly young, slightly built and somewhat passive Chinese American living in Brooklyn.

He wrote to me explaining that for the last three years he had been hospitalized about every 4 to 6 months from racially motivated street assaults. These attacks had left him with some permanent disabilities too. Perhaps needless to say my first advice to him was to move into another neighborhood. He was a very meek individual when I first meet him. He walked with his head down, he would seldom make any eye contact with you and his voice was so low I had to ask him to speak up so I could understand him. But, I saw all this greatly improve over the course of the weekend’s training. His physical fighting skill was still relatively pitiful at that point though.

After he left the training he wrote and emailed me regularly. He was amazed to see that he had now gone a whole year without being attacked and hospitalized! He had a few close calls but by asserting himself a bit he had avoided them from going to physical assaults. To me it was very apparent why things had changed for him. Through his understanding of the predatory and bully mind he had learned how to not to look like such an attractive victim. Next month we will examine how to do that and how predators think in more detail. Stay alert and stay safe,

Continued in Part 2.

Peyton Quinn