Crime Networks Research Articles

Using Complex Networks for Mining Malicious Activities in a Collaborative Map

Collaboration with content sharing via digital maps is a type of application that is characteristic of the context of the social web. A malicious activity that is di cult to detect in this interactive context is the generation of a false trend on the map as the result of a plot in which several false reports by more than one person are done. In this paper, we describe how modeling complex networks of crime reported on a collaborative (or crowd) map can help identify regularities, and therefore show deviations arising from malicious activity. The idea here is to model a network comprised of users who reported crimes and the locations where such crimes were reported (e.g.: a census tract). Starting from a bipartite network model in which the vertices are individuals and census tracts, we projected a monopartite network of users in which the edges indicate the strength of connection between them. This connection strength indicates the degree of co-relatedness of the reports of crime made by these two users in a particular place. By characterizing this, we were able to observe that the relationships of non-hub users among themselves are typically no stronger than the relationship between such non-hub users and the hubs. If this happens, the evidence of malicious activity becomes clear. Simulation of malicious activities in this dataset has allowed evaluating the contributions and limitations of our approach.

DESIGNING EFFICIENT ANN CLASSIFIERS FOR MATCHING BURGLARIES FROM DWELLING HOUSES

Leveraging supervised learning methods is vital for predictive analysis of crime data, however, because of the complex dependencies of crime behavioral variables, classifying behavioral crime profiles is considered to be a demanding task. This paper presents two classifiers for matching single-offender crimes of the type: Burglary from Dwelling Houses (BDH). The first classifier, Multiclass MLP Crime Classifier (M2C2), leverages a multiclass topology to become capable of matching nonprolific offenders in addition to prolific offenders. This method will be useful for matching crimes to several local offenders in a particular district, and it is not suitable for classifying a large number of offenders. Contrarily, the second method, Ensemble Neural Network Crime Classifier (EN2C2), focuses on automating decision-making processes for crime matching through exploiting expert classifiers’ outputs in a bagging ensemble approach. As demonstrated by evaluative experiments, M2C2 is an efficient approach for classifying small numbers of nonprolific and prolific offenders. The proposed method's performance was proved when compared with other common machine learning techniques.

Coupled Behavior Analysis with Applications

Coupled behaviors refer to the activities of one to many actors who are associated with each other in terms of certain relationships. With increasing network and community-based events and applications, such as group-based crime and social network interactions, behavior coupling contributes to the causes of eventual business problems. Effective approaches for analyzing coupled behaviors are not available, since existing methods mainly focus on individual behavior analysis. This paper discusses the problem of Coupled Behavior Analysis (CBA) and its challenges. A Coupled Hidden Markov Model (CHMM)-based approach is illustrated to model and detect abnormal group-based trading behaviors. The CHMM models cater for: 1) multiple behaviors from a group of people, 2) behavioral properties, 3) interactions among behaviors, customers, and behavioral properties, and 4) significant changes between coupled behaviors. We demonstrate and evaluate the models on order-book-level stock tick data from a major Asian exchange and demonstrate that the proposed CHMMs outperforms HMM-only for modeling a single sequence or combining multiple single sequences, without considering coupling relationships to detect anomalies. Finally, we discuss interaction relationships and modes between coupled behaviors, which are worthy of substantial study.

Deepening the Federative Pact? The Dilma Government’s Approach to Crime, Justice and Policing

This article argues that the Rousseff government faced the challenge of deepening a reconfigured federative pact in relation to crime and public insecurity. Strengthening of federal level justice institutions began tentatively under the second Cardoso administration, and accelerated during President Da Silva’s second term. However, it required greater capacity to provide leadership to law-and-order agencies at state and municipal level, and to coordinate multi-agency action both horizontally (with the armed forces) and vertically (with municipal and state police and prison authorities). This was essential to tackle what Dilma’s government identified as the most pressing problems of drug consumption and cross-border trafficking, organized crime networks, prison management and other forms of social and criminal violence. Increased activism by federal and municipal authorities on public insecurity could not circumvent entirely the need for some key structural reforms affecting the state-level justice authorities that were likely to exact a high political price.

The Endangered Empire: American Re- sponses to Transnational Organized Crime

Transnational organized crime in the United States represents the dark side of globalization. This chapter attempts to identify the key problems that face US law enforcement in its efforts to cope with the challenges posed by transnational crime. While the realities of global crime require a broad, comprehensive law enforcement response, unfortunately, even in the United States, law enforcement agencies still tend to turn to local organizations and resort to local remedies to combat international criminal activity. In recent years the size of illegal markets and the resources of transnational crime networks have imposed financial burdens on governments that must devote resources to this struggle. Furthermore, the needs for flexible international trade initiatives and commercial investment frameworks makes the task of US law enforcement agencies engaged in criminal containment and control strategies more difficult to develop and sustain. US law enforcement is multi-layered with jurisdictional authority that is sometimes overlapping and reinforcing which in turn strengthens responses to crime. On the other hand, there are serious issues concerning decentralized enforcement authority that affects federal, regional, and state jurisdictions. Complicating matters still further are the external threats that transnational crime poses that lay beyond the official reach of U. S. criminal justice. Other US issues that complicate and indeed thwart adequate enforcement responses include: the politicization of law enforcement budgets and central government allocations of resources for law enforcement which too often depend upon political partisanship and party loyalties. And media-engendered fears about transnational crime phenomena are often confused with genuine social problems such as immigration and illegal aliens. Too frequently, media distort public attention about crime problems such as urban street gangs operating across national borders.

Smuggling and Trafficking in Turkey: An Analysis of EU–Turkey Cooperation in Combating Transnational Organized Crime

Since the 1990s, there has been a global proliferation of transnational organized crime (TOC). Turkey, as a transit site between the East and the West, has been one of the routes through which organized crime groups transport illicit goods in collaboration with other networks of crime. This paper investigates TOC in Turkey and maps out Turkey's role as a transit country in smuggling and trafficking. The paper also deals with Turkey's contribution to international efforts in combating TOC in light of its EU membership process. The European Commission's annual reports on Turkey's progress towards EU membership that highlight the achievements as well as the shortcomings of Turkey in combating TOC are presented. The paper argues that Turkey has introduced successful reforms and expanded its institutional capacities due to the progress it has achieved in the specific area of combating TOC, as evidenced by the EU progress reports.

Organized Crime Networks: an Application of Network Analysis Techniques to the American Mafia

Using a unique data set on criminal profiles of 800 US Mafia members active in the 1950s and 1960s and on their connections within the Cosa Nostra network, we use simple network analysis techniques to document the structure and composition of the geometry of criminal ties between mobsters. The use of different network centrality measures allows us to collect evidence in line with so far only conjectured views on the functioning of the Mafia. In particular, we shed light on the extent to which family relationships, community roots and ties, legal and illegal activities predict the criminal ranking of the men of honor, suggesting the main characteristics that can be used to detect criminal leaders. Our results are remarkably in line with the evidence that mafia organizations tend to be extremely hierarchical. © 2012 De Gruyter.

Mara Salvatrucha: The Most Dangerous Street Gang in the Americas?

AbstractMara Salvatrucha (MS-13), founded in 1980s Los Angeles by Salvadoran immigrant youth, is today one of the largest street gangs in North and Central America. In recent years the group has acquired a reputation for extreme brutality and has ostensibly mutated into a fast-expanding, transnational organized crime network with possible ties to international terrorists. Drawing on key concepts in gang research and multiple methodological tools, this article seeks to sharpen understanding of MS-13’s structure and activities. While the group is active in many countries, it is transnational only in a symbolic manner, not in its configuration or span of authority. Impelled largely by Central American gang-suppression policies, MS-13 has evolved from a traditional street gang into a group with organized crime characteristics, but it remains a social phenomenon rooted in urban marginality. Ultimately, a more nuanced picture of Mara Salvatrucha can inform the search for more effective gang policies.

Forced Disappearance in an Era of Globalization: Biopolitics, Shadow Networks, and Imagined Worlds

In this article, I argue that the practice of forced disappearance of persons on the part of paramilitary groups has become linked to specific processes of globalization. Global flows related to biopolitics, global crime networks, and dehumanizing imaginations reproduced by mass media together constitute a driving force behind forced disappearances. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Colombian city of Medellín, I analyze how these global flows interact with local armed actors, helping create a climate conducive to forced disappearance. These mechanisms in Colombia show similarities to those in some African and Asian countries. Gaining insight into the mechanisms behind forced disappearance may help prevent it from occurring in the future. Enhancing social inclusion of residents, unraveling the transnational crime networks in which perpetrators are involved, and disseminating rehumanizing images of victims all contribute to curbing the practice of forced disappearance.

Resilience of a corrupt police network: the first and second jokes in Queensland

Resilient organised crime groups survive and prosper despite law enforcement activity, criminal competition and market forces. Corrupt police networks, like any other crime network, must contain resiliency characteristics if they are to continue operation and avoid being closed down through detection and arrest of their members. This paper examines the resilience of a large corrupt police network, namely The Joke which operated in the Australian state of Queensland for a number of decades. The paper uses social network analysis tools to determine the resilient characteristics of the network. This paper also assumes that these characteristics will be different to those of mainstream organised crime groups because the police network operates within an established policing agency rather than as an independent entity hiding within the broader community.

A preliminary theory of dark network resilience

AbstractA crucial contemporary policy question for governments across the globe is how to cope with international crime and terrorist networks. Many such “dark” networks—that is, networks that operate covertly and illegally—display a remarkable level of resilience when faced with shocks and attacks. Based on an in‐depth study of three cases (MK, the armed wing of the African National Congress in South Africa during apartheid; FARC, the Marxist guerrilla movement in Colombia; and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, in Sri Lanka), we present a set of propositions to outline how shocks impact dark network characteristics (resources and legitimacy) and networked capabilities (replacing actors, linkages, balancing integration and differentiation) and how these in turn affect a dark network's resilience over time. We discuss the implications of our findings for policymakers. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Study on Forensic Investigation of Network Crime in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information to computers and other devices on demand. Besides the benefits, it provides a new environment and convenience for network crime, which results difficulties and challenges for forensic investigation. This paper reviews the conception of cloud computing and identifies some key issues of network crime. After analyzing the mechanism and architecture of cloud computing, we propose a forensic model to obtain and fix the criminal evidences. Through investigating from cloud and client aspects, we collect relative log files and communicated data packages, which can succeed to monitor network and store original crime behaviors.

Gender-Based Violence in a Neoliberal Context

Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano's Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Gillian Harkins's Everybody's Family Romance: Reading Incest in Neoliberal America. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2009. At first glance, Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas and Every- body's Family Romance: Reading Incest in Neoliberal America appear quite distinct. The former is an edited collection that offers analytical frame- works, empirical research, and legal strategies to address the increasing rates of murders and disappearances of throughout Latin America since the early 1990s. The latter conducts a critical interpretive reading of popular media, novels, state policy, legal proceedings, and other discursive materials to examine the emergence of incest in the changing cultural and political forms of U.S. nationalism in the late twentieth century. Neither text sits comfortably within a singular disciplinary framework, but Terror- izingWomen is likely to be more compatible with social science texts, while Everybody's Family Romance may be situated in literary criticism/humani- ties. However, a closer look indicates that these two texts both engage questions about violence in the political, economic, and cultural contexts of neoliberal capitalism. Both these texts also interrogate the deployment of gender as a mode through which domains of political economy and race maybe splintered from domains of family, sexuality, and violence. Terrorizing Women facilitates a transdisciplinary and transnational dia- logue through its contributions from feminist researchers; women's rights and human rights advocates; legal scholars; and witnesses who are writ- ing from and about Latin America's growth in murders, disappearances, and other forms of violence against women. Grounded in an investment in scholarship and theoretical production from the Global South, one of this book's key objectives is to advance an analysis of feminicide, or geno- cide against [that] occurs when the historical conditions generate social practices that allow for violent attempts against the integrity, health, liberties, and lives of girls and women (xvi). The editors' introduction argues for using the framework of feminicide as a political gesture, as its location within social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities tran- scends dominant conceptions of femicide (i.e., female homicide). One of the main strengths of this volume is its engagement with root causes of feminicide and the resultant complexities in pursuing jus- tice. In the introduction, the editors assert that the state is accountable for feminicide because of its commission, toleration, [and] omission (18) of violations of women's human rights. It is thus critical to integrate an understanding of the states role in producing a culture of impunity for the murders and disappearances of women. Yet contributors such as Dominguez-Ruvalcaba and Ravelo Blancas as well as Weissman extend this analysis through their discussions of the reconfiguration of Mexican state power, market forces under neoliberal globalization, and the conse- quent transformation of culture and politics. These authors argue that the current climate of impunity is partly determined by the Mexican govern- ments dependent relationships upon international financial institutions (IFIs) and organized crime networks. Market interests transcend the law, which means, for example, that tourist economies and the projection of external images to IFIs take priority over resourcing the state to suffi- ciently implement basic functions like law enforcement. Schmidt Cama- cho s essay focuses on the violence in Ciudad Juarez and the literal border space of Mexico and the United States to argue that feminicide underlies a binational (i.e., beyond the Mexican state) project of governance and eco- nomic growth that aims to create feminized labor populations and dispos- able non-citizens (276). …

On-Site Investigation Electronic Evidence

In the era of computer networks, digital, network, information, with the rapid development of high technology has also brought many problems. Widespread use of network, the network increasing proportion of the population, and uneven quality of the network, network become a new type of criminal tools, criminal place. Crime prevention network, has become the computer field, the legal profession must face one of the topics. And how to resist the various modus operandi, how to do in the case of the detection process did not miss any clues, it became a breakthrough in fight against computer crime areas. This paper[1] firstly outlines the theory of electronic evidence, feature analysis, which describes computer crime / network crime cases in the exploration of electronic evidence collection, extraction and analysis. [1] This work is partially supported by the Opening Project of Key Lab of Information Networks Security of Ministry of Public Security（C09608）

Rethinking information ethics education in Ghana: Is it adequate?

This paper highlights the importance of information ethics and gives an overview of the various aspects of the subject taught at various institutions of higher learning in Ghana. The study notes that information ethics is not taught as a specific or whole subject at any level in the tertiary institutions and questions the depth of education given to students in the light of some serious information ethics violations such as plagiarism, copyright violation, cyber crime and social network abuses. Data for the study were collected mainly from the different university websites, university handbooks, course outlines as well as interviews with librarians and a few faculty members of the respective universities. The study recommends the introduction of information ethics as a university required course for all freshmen, a stand-alone course in information ethics at the Department of Information Studies, adequate sensitization programmes on academic integrity and plagiarism policies, and the enforcement of laws and polices in Ghana. These measures are meant to safeguard individual rights to ownership, privacy, confidentiality and security.

Rethinking information ethics education in Ghana: Is it adequate?

This paper highlights the importance of information ethics and gives an overview of the various aspects of the subject taught at various institutions of higher learning in Ghana. The study notes that information ethics is not taught as a specific or whole subject at any level in the tertiary institutions and questions the depth of education given to students in the light of some serious information ethics violations such as plagiarism, copyright violation, cyber crime and social network abuses. Data for the study were collected mainly from the different university websites, university handbooks, course outlines as well as interviews with librarians and a few faculty members of the respective universities. The study recommends the introduction of information ethics as a university required course for all freshmen, a stand-alone course in information ethics at the Department of Information Studies, adequate sensitization programmes on academic integrity and plagiarism policies, and the enforcement of laws and polices in Ghana. These measures are meant to safeguard individual rights to ownership, privacy, confidentiality and security.

Armed Conflict and Human Rights in Colombia

Armed Conflict and Human Rights in Colombia

Combating transnational environmental crime

Environmental crime is a serious and growing international problem, and one which takes many different forms. It is not limited to criminals polluting the air, water and land and pushing commercially valuable wildlife species closer to extinction; it can also include crimes which speed up climate change, destroy fish stocks, annihilate forests and exhaust essential natural resources. These crimes can have a harmful impact on the economies and security of multiple nations, in some cases they may even threaten the very existence of a country or people. Furthermore, a significant proportion of both wildlife crime and pollution crime cases point to the involvement of organized crime networks. This is evidenced by the detailed planning of operations, substantial financial support, the careful management of international shipments and massive profits. Still, to date, transnational environmental crime has been poorly attended to by the transnational organised crime and transnational policing discourse. National and international institutions have prioritised other forms of organised crime, giving little thought to the nuances of environmental crime and how they should be reflected in policing. Intention of this paper is to point out the importance of international cooperation and to point out the its good examples.

Shift Sex-Trade Focus Away From Victims, Advocates Urge

Shift Sex-Trade Focus Away From Victims, Advocates Urge

Morselli, Carlo: Inside Criminal Networks

Inside Criminal Networks is a monograph completely dedicated to social network analysis and crime. In particular, Carlo Morselli applies social network analysis to a number of case studies of criminal groups and organizations. Most of the case studies had already been published by the author during the last years (Morselli and Giguere 2006; Morselli and Petit 2007; Morselli et al. 2007; Morselli and Roy 2008; Morselli 2009). For this reason, the most experienced reader should not expect new data from this book. However, the author places his previous research in a broader context. This supplements the case studies with a more comprehensive and multi-layered approach to the subject. The first chapter provides a general introduction to the criminal network perspective. It places it in the broader framework of scientific research on organized crime and networks with abundant references. Chapter 2 briefly describes the case studies. All the cases but one (the 9–11 terrorist group) were taken from Canadian law enforcement operations. The chapter also provides some basic information about the application of social network analysis to criminal networks. Chapters 3 to 9 each deal with a single case study. Case studies analyze different types of criminal organizations. These range from relatively small drug-smuggling groups to street gangs, motorcycle gangs and a terrorist group. The structure of the book makes it possible to read each case separately. However, Morselli provides a constant common thread, with cross-references to other cases. The author highlights constant elements among different networks. This enables a more vivid and deeper sequential reading of the chapters. Beside the type of criminal network, each operation has its own peculiarities. This derives from the strategies and approaches adopted by the law enforcement agencies. Consequently, each research has some specificities in its design. For example, in Project Caviar (Chapter 6) law enforcement agencies only seized drug consignments for two years. Arrests only occurred Eur J Crim Policy Res (2010) 16:69–70 DOI 10.1007/s10610-010-9118-7