What is a Serial Predator?

A serial predator is someone who has completed 2 or more attacks.  It's that simple. Strider believes that serial predators are responsible for 90% of all violence. 

If you want a more comprehensive way to think about serial predators, Strider classifies along 3 dimensions:

1. How active they are

Highly Active (1/week or more)

Active (1/month or more)

Dormant (waiting for a situation, life change or opportunity - for example, many predators in jail are dormant due to limited opportunities)

The criminal justice system does not attempt to find out every crime a criminal has committed, rather they focus on the ones they know about or can prove.  Since we focus on predators who may or may not have been convicted of crimes, we developed a simple way to gauge their activity.  Of course, some act daily and others wait months for an explosive act of carnage.  But generally speaking, predators are either highly active, active, or dormant.

2. How effective they are

Learning = All predators start here and most appear to start at an early age.   

Effective = Because they were not stopped during their learning phase, these predators become effective at one or more forms of predation, such as sexual assault.  

Master = After many, many victims, these predators have essentially mastered their craft and are the most difficult to detect and defeat.

For example, one predator was a taxi driver who would drive to a dark street when his female victim wasn't paying attention.  But the first one jumped out and ran to safety.  However, she didn't report the attempted attack and no police officer was able to investigate.  Before the next victim got in his taxi, he removed the inside door handles...

3. The kind of predation they are currently doing

murder

sexual assault

assault

fraud

pedophilia

robbery

burglary

kidnapping

It is widely misunderstood that predators (and criminals) primarily do one crime and have one way of doing it.  Predators are opportunistic and will try a variety of crimes and methods, often combining them.  One predator we studied worked with a partner and was proficient at home invasion, rape, kidnapping, extortion, arson, and murder.