The Application of Link Analysis to Police Intelligence

Author(s):  
Walter R. Harper ◽  
Douglas H. Harris

Link analysis procedures were developed and evaluated to aid law-enforcement agencies integrate collected information and develop hypotheses leading to the prevention and control of organized crime. The procedures were designed to portray the relationships among suspected criminals, to determine the structure of criminal organizations, and to identify the nature of suspected criminal activities. An experiment was conducted in which 29 teams of law enforcement intelligence analysts completed link analyses from information contained in identical data bases. The results compared favorably with criterion solutions prepared earlier. Subsequent field applications of link analysis by trained law enforcement officers confirmed the utility and potential value of these procedures.

Author(s):  
Patricia (Paddy) Rawlinson

Organized crime is one of the most popular topics of media attention within the crime genre, providing a plethora of fictional representations and factual explanations for popular consumption. Its media presence has not only entertained the public but also interacted with and help form policy responses by governments and law enforcement agencies. Beset by ambiguous definitions and typically operating in a clandestine manner, organized crime has become subject to various forms of mythologizing, romanticized and exaggerated, thrilling and terrifying, emerging as a phenomenon riddled with contradictions yet made consistently attractive by the mystique that dominates media narratives. Blurring the line between fact and fiction as these narratives often do, they can serve or undermine attempts to conceptualize and control organized crime, and in some cases, modify the behavior of criminals themselves. The mythologizing of organized crime has been one of the major challenges for criminologists researching the topic. Unlike many other forms of crime, gaining access to subjects involved in this surreptitious world is especially difficult for academics, consequently conferring exaggerated and misleading media and official representations of organized crime greater currency. Further, with the ostensible explosion of global crime networks, shaped by diverse languages, cultures, and ideologies, gaining a more accurate understanding of the nature of and threat posed by organized crime has become even more problematic. In examining the production and content of the dominant myths around organized crime, the article looks at the impact of media and official representations of these mythologies and how they have helped to preserve the political, social, and economic status quo.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gian Maria Campedelli ◽  
Francesco Calderoni ◽  
Mario Paolucci ◽  
Tommaso Comunale ◽  
Daniele Vilone ◽  
...  

Criminal organizations exploit their presence on territories and local communities to recruit new workforce in order to carry out their criminal activities and business. The ability to attract individuals is crucial for maintaining power and control over the territories in which these groups are settled. This study proposes the formalization, development and analysis of an agent-based model (ABM) that simulates a neighborhood of Palermo (Sicily) with the aim to understand the pathways that lead individuals to recruitment into organized crime groups (OCGs). Using empirical data on social, economic and criminal conditions of the area under analysis, we use a multi-layer network approach to simulate this scenario. As the final goal, we test different policies to counter recruitment into OCGs. These scenarios are based on two different dimensions of prevention and intervention: (i) primary and secondary socialization and (ii) law enforcement targeting strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-661
Author(s):  
Todd Hataley

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between trade-based money laundering and organized crime. Trade-based money laundering (TBML) has emerged as the newest and possibly most complex method used by organized crime and white-collar crime groups for illegally laundering money in the international financial system. Using legitimate global trade streams, criminal organizations are able to transfer billions of dollars annually between jurisdictions without having to adhere to state-level currency regulations. Design/methodology/approach Using a rational approach to understanding the behavior of criminal organizations, it is argued that TBML will continue to grow as a preferred methodology for laundering money internationally. As criminal organizations continue to be displaced from the more traditional methods of money laundering, they will look for and find TBML as a viable alternative for moving money between different jurisdictions. Findings As the methodology becomes more developed, the skill set will transfer to an increasing number of organized crime groups and be incorporated as a mainstream method for laundering and moving money. Practical implications To stay current with contemporary money laundering schemes, law enforcement agencies will have to train their investigators to spot, investigate and collect requisite evidence for successful prosecution and disruption of TBML offences. Moreover, in the absence of a global regime for sharing trade and customs information, legislators and law enforcement agencies will have to consider how to best expedite the sharing of trade and customs information. Originality/value This is the only study to address TBML as an emerging money laundering technique and the transfer of the skill between organized crime groups. It further details the skills that police investigators needs to develop to successfully combat TBML.


Author(s):  
Ruslan Ahmedov ◽  
Yuliya Ivanova

In 2020, the 75th anniversary of the Victory of the soviet people is celebrated over fascism. An important role in achieving this result in the conditions law enforcement officers also provided wartime assistance. The main purpose of their professional activities was to ensure the implementation of principles of legality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 76-78
Author(s):  
С.А. Лукашев

В статье рассматривается такой вид специальных средств, как служебные собаки, которые используются сотрудниками правоохранительных органов зарубежных стран при охране общественного порядка. This article addresses the type of special means such as service dogs, which are used by law enforcement officers of foreign countries in public order. There were analyzed cases of their use by various law enforcement agencies in consideration of this topic.


Author(s):  
Сергей Александрович Грязнов

Несколько лет назад об идее обучения сотрудников правоохранительных органов посредством виртуальной реальности (VR) не могло быть и речи, прежде всего, из-за высокой стоимости данной технологии. Сегодня виртуальная реальность стала технически зрелой, затраты снизились, а технологии широко распространились по многим профессиям. Можно уверенно сказать, что правоохранительным органам нужны лидеры, обладающие навыками и компетенциями XXI в., выходящими за рамки традиционного обучения. Целью данной статьи является рассмотрение (на зарубежном примере) важности применения технологии виртуальной реальности для обучения сотрудников правоохранительных органов. Автором сделан вывод о том, что использование виртуальной реальности в обучении - это наиболее эффективный способ передачи информации. Данные технологии обучения можно использовать для безопасного повышения квалификации, чтобы в будущем избежать реальных рисков. A few years ago, the idea of training law enforcement officers through virtual reality (VR) was out of the question, primarily because of the high cost of this technology. Today, virtual reality has become technically mature, costs have decreased, and technology has spread widely across many professions. We can confidently say that law enforcement agencies need leaders with skills and competencies of the 21st-century that go beyond traditional training. The purpose of this article is to consider (on a foreign example) the importance of using virtual reality technology for training law enforcement officers. The author concluded that the use of virtual reality in training is the most effective way of transmitting information. These training technologies can be used for safe professional development in order to avoid real risks in the future.


Author(s):  
Volodymyr Ivantsov

It is emphasized that the current legislation uses the terms "law enforcement agency", "law enforcement officer", which is directly correlated with law enforcement activities, which in turn indicates the unconditional relevance of the current study. This article analyzes the current legislation in order to separate law enforcement agencies from other government agencies, in order to assign certain positions of government agencies to law enforcement officers. As a result, the imperfections of the definitions of Ukrainian legislation for unambiguous identification of both law enforcement activities and the list of law enforcement agencies have been established. Theoretical and legal bases for establishing the affiliation of a state body to the list of law enforcement agencies in terms of practical implementation of current regulations are obtained by assessing the status of the Civil Service of Ukraine for Emergencies, namely: the assignment of a body to law enforcement should be carried out separately , taking into account the legal position (status) of such body defined in normative legal acts; if the endowment of a certain entity with the status of a law enforcement body has not occurred normatively, it is necessary to proceed from the analysis of the purpose (tasks) and basic functions assigned to a particular body and, accordingly, the powers vested in such a body It has been proved that SES bodies do not belong to law enforcement bodies, as they belong to the unified state system of civil protection (SES bodies are not assigned law enforcement tasks and / or functions; they are not endowed with law enforcement powers), and their officials cannot be recognized as law enforcement officers. body. It is emphasized that the legal approach proposed by the author to establish the affiliation of a state body to the list of "law enforcement agencies" may be fully applicable to other subjects of power, which in the future will provide an opportunity to outline the comprehensive range of law enforcement agencies in Ukraine.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0255067
Author(s):  
Annamaria Ficara ◽  
Lucia Cavallaro ◽  
Francesco Curreri ◽  
Giacomo Fiumara ◽  
Pasquale De Meo ◽  
...  

Data collected in criminal investigations may suffer from issues like: (i) incompleteness, due to the covert nature of criminal organizations; (ii) incorrectness, caused by either unintentional data collection errors or intentional deception by criminals; (iii) inconsistency, when the same information is collected into law enforcement databases multiple times, or in different formats. In this paper we analyze nine real criminal networks of different nature (i.e., Mafia networks, criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations) in order to quantify the impact of incomplete data, and to determine which network type is most affected by it. The networks are firstly pruned using two specific methods: (i) random edge removal, simulating the scenario in which the Law Enforcement Agencies fail to intercept some calls, or to spot sporadic meetings among suspects; (ii) node removal, modeling the situation in which some suspects cannot be intercepted or investigated. Finally we compute spectral distances (i.e., Adjacency, Laplacian and normalized Laplacian Spectral Distances) and matrix distances (i.e., Root Euclidean Distance) between the complete and pruned networks, which we compare using statistical analysis. Our investigation identifies two main features: first, the overall understanding of the criminal networks remains high even with incomplete data on criminal interactions (i.e., when 10% of edges are removed); second, removing even a small fraction of suspects not investigated (i.e., 2% of nodes are removed) may lead to significant misinterpretation of the overall network.


Author(s):  
Pavel S. Rakhmanov

The problems of changing the position of the Ministry of Internal Affairs after the events of February–March 1917 in the Tambov Governorate are investigated. We study the state policy, the attitude of local authorities and the public to representatives of this socio-professional group, individual features of the adaptation of its representatives to new socio-political conditions. The relevance of the research is due to both significant gaps in the historiography of the issue, especially at the regional level of the study of the problem, and a certain consonance with the modern problems of Russian law enforcement agencies in the context of transformations. It is concluded that representatives of the broad popular strata and the soldier masses treated former em-ployees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs extremely negatively, which was especially pronounced in the period that followed the revolutionary events of February 1917. However, the leadership of both the governorate as a whole and in individual counties pursued an ambivalent policy towards representatives of this social and professional group. On the one hand, the tasks were set for the maximum removal of former law enforcement officers from participation in public and political life, and on the other, their professional skills were in demand in the newly created militia bodies.


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