Co-offending Network Mining

Abstract

We propose here a computational framework for co-offending network mining defined in terms of a process that combines formal data modeling with data mining of large crime and terrorism data sets as gathered and maintained by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Our crime data analysis aims at exploring relevant properties of criminal networks in arrest-data and is based on 5 years of real-world crime data that was made available for research purposes. This data was retrieved from a large database system with several million data records keeping information for the regions of the Province of British Columbia. Beyond application of innovative data mining techniques for the analysis of the crime data set, we also provide a comprehensive data model applicable to any such data set and link the data model to the analysis techniques. We contend that central aspects considered in the work presented here carry over to a wide range of large data sets studied in intelligence and security informatics to better serve law enforcement and intelligence agencies.