Criminals generally have to balance risk versus reward, so by increasing the perceived risks or reducing the perceived rewards we become less attractive targets. I loathe lists of specifics, so I will try to boil this process down to a few points.

We need to understand a little bit about the fears and motivations of criminals. While different types of criminals will have different specific goals, we can make some generalizations.

From the criminals perspective any potential victimization has associated risks. In no particular order:

Injury/Death: Aside from a natural fear of injury, criminals generally can't afford to get injured. If they are injured then they cannot do their job, and they themselves become vulnerable to other criminals.

Arrest/Capture: Criminals don't want to go to jail, and many victimizers have already been there before.

Failure/Effort: If the criminal does not believe that the attempt will be successful or it will be too much work to get the reward then why should they make the attempt?

Loss of Status: This is probably the most difficult to get a handle on, because it is specific to the type of criminal and their peer group. A typical mugger is probably just as disgusted by child molesters as anyone else, but we can't reliably determine or exploit this in a self-defense situation.

There also needs to be some motivation for the criminal to carry out his crime. Again, this will vary in the specifics for each criminal. The motivation for a particular victimization might be any one or combination of these 'rewards':

Ideological Terrorists and hate criminals have an ideology that honors or at least tolerates the victimization of some particular group.

Monetary There is a financial gain for the completion of the crime.

Hierarchical There is an increase in status amongst the criminals peers.

Psychological This is basically everything else. For some reason known only to the criminal they need or want to execute the victimization. Sexual gratification, mental disorders, can all be lumped into this category.

Prior to executing an attack the criminal has to decide if they are willing to accept the risks for the perceived rewards.

In my next post I will talk about how to make use of this information: Reduce your threat profile