Statistical Model Helps Police Identify Crime Series Speeds Apprehension of Perpetrators

Article 1:
Statistical model helps police identify crime series;

speeds apprehension of perpetrators
Date:
August 11, 2015
Source:
American Statistical Association
Summary:
A statistical model -- now an easy-to-use software tool -- local police can use to
identify a series of related crimes and nab a suspect has been unveiled. Crime linkage
is the investigative process of identifying a crime series--a group of crimes committed
by the same person or group of people. The goal of the crime linkage model and
resulting software is to help crime analysts more quickly and easily sift through
massive amounts of crime data to accurately discover patterns that could indicate a
crime series such as one of the most difficult crimes to solve: burglaries.
Full story:
A statistical model--now an easy-to-use software tool--local police can use to identify
a series of related crimes and nab a suspect was unveiled by Michael D. Porter during a
presentation at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle.
Porter presented a talk titled "A Statistical Approach to Crime Linkage during a
session focused on improving analysis of defense systems using statistical methods. He
collaborated on the project with Brian J. Reich, associate professor of statistics at North
Carolina State University.
Crime linkage is the investigative process of identifying a crime series--a group of
crimes committed by the same person or group of people. The goal of the crime linkage
model and resulting software is to help crime analysts more quickly and easily sift through
massive amounts of crime data to accurately discover patterns that could indicate a crime
series such as one of the most difficult crimes to solve: burglaries.
"Establishing that a set of crimes is attributable to a common offender or set of
offenders is a critical first step to bringing an end to the crime spree and apprehending the
criminal or criminals," said Porter, assistant professor of statistics at the University of
Alabama, during his presentation.
Currently, police investigators must manually sift through hundreds of cases and use
their expert judgment to determine whether a series of crimes is linked. Even while using
query-enabled databases it is a complicated task, requiring the crime analyst to make complex
comparisons of the similarity and distinctiveness of crime scene characteristics, the criminal's
behaviors and any eyewitness descriptions.
The crime linkage model complements an analyst's experience and knowledge by
enabling the investigator to pool information from various crime scenes, strengthening the
case against a serial offender and aiding in profiling the criminal. "The model offers the
potential to put linkage analysis on a more reliable and scientific basis, increases
standardization, reduces the workload of police investigators and improves the prospect of
using linkage analysis as evidence in legal proceedings," explained Porter.
It also can predict the likely location of the next event in an offender's crime series, an
important aspect of tactical crime analysis. It does so by weighting more recent events
stronger to capture changes in the criminal's behavior--namely site-selection and crime-scene
behaviors.
In the course of planning and carrying out a crime and in response to the situations
encountered, an offender will make a series of decisions--perhaps unknowingly--resulting in
a unique set of behaviors, commonly known as modus operandi. Using statistical learning
and data-mining algorithms, the model uses the measurable results of these decisions,
recorded in a criminal incident database, to determine if crimes are linked.
Porter and Reich used 2001-2006 data on 10,670 burglaries in Baltimore County, Maryland,
to build and test the efficiency of their crime-fighting model. The results show the model was
highly effective in identifying crime series, including the following results:
 The model captured 85% of links with only 5% false positives.
 The model has a precision of 91%, indicating 91% of the 100 highest-ranked pairs are
true linkages.
 It identified 74% to 89% of true additional crimes from the series in a list of the top
50 crimes. When two or three crimes were already in the series, the model's
performance improved to 86% to 91%.
 A typical breaking-and-entering crime series was committed within 8.3 square miles
and a period of 266 days.
 Analysis of 590 crime series of four or more crimes indicates performance of next-
event prediction varies greatly. If 10 square kilometers are monitored for the next
breaking-and-entering crime in a series, the model can detect an average of 65% of
the crimes.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates there were nearly 2.2 million
burglaries in the country in 2010 and arrests were made in only 12.4% of the cases. The
effectiveness of the model proves it is a promising crime-fighting tool that will be helpful to
police investigators as they work to solve more burglaries, said Porter.
To encourage use of the model, Porter and Reich coded the model's algorithms in the R
programming language and have made the software freely available to police departments,
other law enforcement agencies and criminologists. "It is our hope the law enforcement and
the crime research communities will use the model to combat and reduce serial crimes, such
as burglaries," concluded Porter.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150811103547.htm

Statistical Model Helps Police Identify Crime Series Speeds Apprehension of Perpetrators

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