Developing Conversational Agents for Use in Criminal Investigations

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in environments that involve high risk and high consequence decision-making is severely hampered by critical design issues. These issues include system transparency and brittleness, where transparency relates to (i) the explainability of results and (ii) the ability of a user to inspect and verify system goals and constraints; and brittleness, (iii) the ability of a system to adapt to new user demands. Transparency is a particular concern for criminal intelligence analysis, where there are significant ethical and trust issues that arise when algorithmic and system processes are not adequately understood by a user. This prevents adoption of potentially useful technologies in policing environments. In this article, we present a novel approach to designing a conversational agent (CA) AI system for intelligence analysis that tackles these issues. We discuss the results and implications of three different studies; a Cognitive Task Analysis to understand analyst thinking when retrieving information in an investigation, Emergent Themes Analysis to understand the explanation needs of different system components, and an interactive experiment with a prototype conversational agent. Our prototype conversational agent, named Pan, demonstrates transparency provision and mitigates brittleness by evolving new CA intentions. We encode interactions with the CA with human factors principles for situation recognition and use interactive visual analytics to support analyst reasoning. Our approach enables complex AI systems, such as Pan, to be used in sensitive environments, and our research has broader application than the use case discussed.

INFLUENCE OF THE PERFORMANCE OF NATIONAL POLICE SERVICE IN PREVENTION OF ORGANIZED CRIMES IN MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA

This paper uses data collected for an MA Thesis on influence of the Performance of National Police Service in Prevention of organized Crimes in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study was necessitated by continued rise of criminal gangs despite police service efforts to contain the problem. The study was guided by three specific objectives, but for this paper first and second objectives will be discussed. First, the examined the influence of resource capacity on the performance of national police service in prevention of organized crimes in Mombasa County. Secondly, the study examined the influence of motivation on the performance of national police service in prevention of organized crimes. Thirdly, the last objective assessed the influence of external environment on the performance of National Police Service in prevention of organized crimes in Mombasa County, Kenya. The survey utilized Expectancy theory and Crime Pattern Theory and adopted a descriptive research design employing a mixed method paradigm. The study sample size comprised 306 National Police Service officers (NPS); Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers, Kenya Police service (KP), and Administration Police (AP) officers both senior and junior. Qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis derived from the study objectives. On the other hand, quantitative data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. According to the findings, 17% of the police officers still undertake operations without intelligence briefing, and that despite the availability of criminal intelligence. Besides, access to criminal intelligence was still a major challenge to 45% of the officers while inter-agency coordination was a rare part of the fight against organized crime to 56% of the officers who were not involved. The findings also revealed that despite the importance of training towards the prevention of organized crime, 33% of police officers did not have access to these trainings. Furthermore, 53% of the officers, cited lack of recognition and motivation that could go a long way in raising performance of the police officers. The study makes two major recommendations; special attention to training and curriculum review that addresses the demands of emerging global security challenges. Secondly, officer’s welfare remains a thorny issue which can potentially stifle any crime prevention initiative. Welfare issues of concern such as merit and fairness in promotions, rewards and other incentives, and better compensation were said to be an integral part of any serious police reform agenda.

Harm Caused by a Crime to a Legal Entity: Criminal Legal, Criminal Intelligence and Criminal Procedural Aspects of Comparative Legal Research

The authors analyse the existing problems related to the determination of the extent and nature of harm caused by a crime to a legal entity in accordance with the legislation of Russia and Vietnam in theory and practice. According to the authors, the current legislation of Russia and Vietnam defines various methods, the use of which makes it possible to determine the characteristics of harm for a victim – a legal entity, such as: the investigative proceedings, the conduct of criminal intelligence measures, the examination of documentary records, audits, and other studies. At the end of the research the authors formulated the conclusion that now there are difficulties in determining this type of harm as business reputation, as a result of this phenomenon the right of a victim for harm compensation is limited. Consequently, the further development of the system of legislation requires the creation of the most effective methods in order to quickly and expediently establish the nature and extent of non-property damage (including business reputation) caused by a crime to a legal entity.

Investigator’s covert-nature procedural activities

Over the years, most of the Russian processualists denied the investigator’s right to engage in actions of covert nature and deemed it impossible to integrate the norms of criminal intelligence legislation in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation adopted on 18.12.2001 No. 174-FZ, rightly referring to the impossibility to vest a single duty-bearer engaged in a preliminary investigation with unprecedented powers. Meanwhile, the latest decades have been marked by active legislative activity in many countries, which in fact has turned covert criminal intelligence and surveillance into a procedural activity. These innovations became specific of a number of countries regardless of their legal system belonging to the Romano-Germanic or Anglo-Saxon legal system, testifying to more profound roots of the problem. The study is also relevant in terms of dissatisfaction, expressed by the Russian law-enforcement authorities, with the crime solvency rate and with the interaction of criminal intelligence detectives and internal affairs investigators. The goal of the study is to identify the procedural provisions governing the investigator’s covert-nature activities and related law enforcement problems. The methodological framework of the research comprises general and particular methods of scientific knowledge: dialectical, systemic, deductive, inductive; synthesis, analysis; comparative legal analysis, statistical and other methods. Results and novelty: it was concluded that the Code of Criminal Procedure provides for the regulation of the investigator’s confidential-nature activities inherent in covert criminal intelligence and surveillance and requiring more detailed elaboration, as concerns the issues of securing the rights of partakers of the said activity; the authors express doubt regarding the justification of the legislator’s differentiation of covert activities under criminal cases into covert investigative actions (Art. 185, 186, 186.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) and covert operational and investigative operations that are in fact identical to the former (Art. 6, Cl. 9-11 of the Russian Federation Federal Law No. 144-FZ as of 12.08.1995 “On criminal intelligence and surveillance”.

Effects of application of Intelligence-Led Policing in prevention and suppression of the criminal offense of robbery in the Republic of Serbia

The aim of this research is to scientifically describe the effects of Intelligence - Led Policing as a strategic way of managing police affairs in preventing and combating the crime of robbery under Article 206 of the Criminal Code in the Republic of Serbia. The research was conducted as a theoretical one and general scientific and logical methods were used in its realization. The effects of the application of the Intelligence - Led Policing have not been analyzed so far in the national scientific and professional literature, and the paper presents the results of the research, which focus on the philosophy and effects of the application of the model, including the importance of operational management and criminal intelligence in crime prevention acts of robbery in the Republic of Serbia. The results of the research concluded that, unlike traditional models of police work, the application of the Intelligence - Led Policing contributed to the reduction of the number of robberies committed under Article 206 of the Criminal Code, as indicated by statistical data for 2018 (compared to 2017, decreased by 16.85%) and 2019 (compared to 2018, decreased by 24.2%). The effects of the application of the model are evident in large urban areas, where out of the total number, only 40% of robbery crimes were committed in the city of Belgrade alone, and whose trend in 2019 showed decrease of 36.5%.