Part 1: Deeper Into the Timeline The criminal interview model is more complex than I knew when I wrote the book — and that's a good thing

Books have deadlines. Understanding doesn't.

The Timeline of Self-Defense was finished in 2024. Everything in it is true. Everything in it reflects things I believe and have tested. But the moment a book is finished, the author keeps thinking, keeps teaching, keeps learning from students, from incidents, from conversations with people who have spent decades in this space. The book is a snapshot. The work keeps moving.

This is the first in a series of posts where I share what's being added to the framework. Not corrections (unless new info is found). Extensions. Things the book planted the seed for that have continued to grow.

The Criminal Interview — What Already Existed

The concept of the criminal interview has been around in self-defense circles for a while. The basic idea is useful: before most predatory violence occurs, the predator runs an assessment. they are not picking targets randomly. They are gathering information, testing, watching how you respond to pressure, to proximity, to requests. That assessment tells them whether you're worth the risk and how to proceed.

Marc MacYoung mapped out five interview types: Regular, Hot, Escalating, Silent, and Prolonged. It's a solid foundation, and his thinking on this is worth reading in full if you haven't.

The limitation isn't that it's wrong. It's that the five types are organized by what the interaction looks like on the surface, the style and pace of approach. That framing is useful for recognition. But it leaves two things underexplored. First, it doesn't fully account for predators who select based purely on situational conditions, with no meaningful interaction beforehand at all. Second, and more importantly, it doesn't separate two things that look similar from the outside but operate through completely different mechanisms: the predator who extends an assessment across time, and the predator who builds a social position across time. Those are different operations that require different countermeasures.

I organized my six categories around mechanism rather than appearance. What is the predator's primary tool? That question produces a different map.

Expanding the Model

What I've been developing is a framework organized not by what the interaction looks like on the surface, but by what the predator is actually using as his primary mechanism. Six categories. Each with a different tool.

The first is Force and Intimidation. The most recognizable. Aggression, volume, implied physical threat. The predator is watching to see how you respond to fear. If you shrink, comply, or freeze, they have what they need.

The second is Deception and Disguise. The predator conceals his intent behind a false identity or false need. Fake injury, false authority, the "excuse me, can you help me" setup. They are not testing your response to pressure. but exploiting your good nature. Most technique-based training doesn't prepare people for this because it doesn't look like a threat until it's too late.

The third is Observation and Passive Selection. No direct contact at all. The predator watches, follows, monitors. They gather information about you without ever engaging. Your patterns, your vulnerabilities, whether you're alone, whether you're paying attention. By the time contact happens, the interview is already done. This type begins long before what most people consider a self-defense situation has even started.

The fourth is Social and Status Calibration. This one gets misread constantly because it looks like normal social friction. Mild disrespect, teasing, boundary pushing, a small ask that feels rude but not threatening. The predator is reading how you navigate status. If you back down or try to appease, they escalate. If you hold your ground calmly and clearly, most of the time the interview ends right there. The problem is that this type is specifically designed to read as social rather than criminal. Most people don't recognize it as an interview at all.

The fifth is Trust and Relationship Building. Grooming in the broadest sense. The predator builds a genuine-feeling connection over time specifically to enable access or compliance later. Con artists operate here. So do domestic abusers in the early targeting phase. So do predators who position themselves as mentors or authority figures. By the time the actual harm occurs, the relationship has already done all the work. This is the category that produces the "but I knew them" response.

This is where it's worth being precise about what MacYoung's Prolonged Interview does and doesn't cover. The Prolonged Interview is an extended assessment, the predator is still running the same question in the other interview types run: can I get away with this? They are testing across a longer timeline, through incremental boundary violations, watching how you respond to each probe. Trust and Relationship Building is a different operation. By the time this interview is running, the predator isn't assessing. They are constructing. Building a social role: friend, partner, mentor, authority figure, that gives him legitimate access and makes later exploitation harder to name or resist. MacYoung's model asks what the predator is testing. This category asks what social position the predator is building. Those are different questions that require different countermeasures, which is why they belong in separate categories.

The sixth is Opportunity and Environmental Selection. No traditional interview. The predator selects based on situational vulnerability. Wrong place, wrong time, appearing distracted or isolated or impaired. You weren't chosen because of anything you did in an interaction. You were chosen because the conditions were right. This is the hardest type to read in the moment because there's often nothing to read. The selection happened before you were aware of it.

What This Looks Like Against the Timeline

When you map these six types against the Before, During, and After framework from the book, a clear picture comes together.

Observation and Passive Selection begins in the Before phase. The interview is already running before the During phase has started. Trust and Relationship Building also starts in Before, sometimes weeks, months, or years earlier. By the time you're in the During phase with either of these types, you're not intercepting an interview. You're already inside one.

Social and Status Calibration typically begins at the Approach or early Interview stage. Force and Intimidation and Deception and Disguise tend to show up at the Dump, the moment where the situation becomes undeniable. Opportunity and Environmental is recognized, if at all, at the Interview phase, but the selection happened long before that.

The Hierarchy That Changes Everything

The further left on the Timeline an interview type begins, the more sophisticated and dangerous the predator running it.

Force and Intimidation only requires the Dump. It's the most obvious type, and in many ways the easiest to recognize and respond to, not because physical violence is easy to handle, but because you at least know what you're dealing with.

Trust and Relationship Building starts before the During phase even exists. A predator running this interview has been working toward his goal since before you categorized them as a threat. They are already past your defenses because your defenses were built for someone who looks dangerous.

That hierarchy is a teachable concept on its own. It reframes the entire conversation about what self-defense preparation actually means. The people who are hardest to protect yourself from are not the ones who look dangerous. They're the ones who looked safe for a long time before they didn't.

Why I'm Sharing This Now

The book established the foundation. The Before, During, After structure. The 80:20 method. The principle that self-defense is safety training, not fighting training. Those concepts are solid and I stand behind all of them.

But frameworks grow. They get pressure tested by real encounters, by student questions that don't fit neatly into existing categories. Good ideas deserve to be built on.

This is Part 1. There's more coming. I'll be releasing these expansions here as they develop, and eventually some of this material will make its way into updated teaching and future writing.

For now, know what kind of interview you're in before you decide how to respond. Because the response that works for one type can make another type significantly worse.

That's not a small thing. That's most of it.

Don't learn from me because I made no mistakes. Learn from me because I made them all, so you don't have to.

Ready to start from the foundation?

Everything in this post builds on the core framework in The Timeline of Self-Defense. The Before, During, and After model. The 80:20 method. The principles behind recognition, response, and recovery. If you haven't read it, that's where this all begins.

[Get the book here → YOUR BOOK LINK]