Crime Analysis

""The purpose of this paper is to comment on one of the developments arising from the 2011 summer riots in England, where a website was set up so that the public could identify those involved and report them to the Police. The use of modern technology to identify insurgents could be a response to the lack of working censuses in many areas where stability operations are conducted, seen by some observers as a major weakness.
The central idea is to tell friend from foe, or in classical Maoist terminology, fish from the water, using some of the widely available tools which, on the other hand, seem to have been used to spread the violence in the UK.
The use of a website to spread pictures of violent incidents and have the perpetrators identified by the population would be a way to plug a gap in police capabilities, since the British authorities are unlikely to have the necessary manpower and knowledge to do so on their own.
This is why we can talk of "decentralized intelligence collection and analysis."""

The article presents the main aspects of the historical development of deviant behavior , which , in my opinion , is influenced by socio- economic, gender , ethnic , and religious factors. Particularly strong impact on the "choice" forms of deviant behavior class accessory provided individuals. Deviance is represented as a pulsating phenomenon , with most of its development and distribution accounts for periods of social instability. The exact definition of deviance causes serious difficulties : in different social groups acceptable behavior was determined in accordance with the norms and values ​​inherent in these groups. Opportunities society (churches, the repressive apparatus , other structures ) in the confrontation of deviance in the period under review were extremely minor

This study is one of the first applications of Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) in an urban context outside the US. It focuses on robberies recorded in Milan, Italy from 2007 to 2010 and applies RTM methodology to analyze urban risk factors in order to forecast future robbery location. Moreover, it discusses the effectiveness of RTM in comparison with another crime forecasting technique and its usefulness for orienting security policies, including countries characterized by poor crime data quality and availability.

The use of hotspot mapping techniques such as KDE to represent the geographical spread of linear events can be problematic. Network-constrained data (for example transport-related crime) require a different approach to visualize concentration. We propose a methodology called Hot Routes, which measures the risk distribution of crime along a linear network by calculating the rate of crimes per section of road. This method has been designed for everyday crime analysts, and requires only a Geographical Information System (GIS), and suitable data to calculate. A demonstration is provided using crime data collected from London bus routes.

Housing in Malta has always been an important issue and policies started being formed after Second World War. In 1943 the Housing Act was passed, which in return allowed the Government to expropriate private properties for state use (Structure Plan for the Maltese Islands Housing Topic Paper, 2002). Till the 1960s, Government housing in Malta was minimal however, in the 1970s and 1980s the Government intervened and housing plots were at their peak (Camilleri, 2000). In fact, by the end of the 1970s, most towns and villages had newly-built housing estates on their outskirts. During this time, the Home Ownership Schemes (HOS) were also launched whereby plots for terraced houses were given out on temporary emphyteusis (Camilleri, 2000). During this time, precisely in 1976, an autonomous Housing Authority was set up so as to improve the housing conditions of very low income groups and also to promote HOS.

""Modus via. Moving beyond the journey-to-crime to fine-tune geographical offender profiling.

Geographical offender profiling, a method to predict to most likely anchor point of an offender based on an analysis of his crime locations, can possibly increase the efficiency of police investigations. By determining areas where the investigation might prove most fruitful in finding the offender, the police can deploy neighborhood canvasses, DNA-searches or database-inquiries efficiently by targeting a specific area.

The main assumption of geographical offender profiling is that an offender commits crimes related to the anchor points in his routine activities (i.e. Crime Pattern Theory). When an offender commits a series of crimes the end of his journeys-to-crimes the crime site will therefore be related to these anchor points. This makes it possible to relate the crime locations to an offender’s anchor point. The current methods of geographical offender profiling focus on an analysis of the crime locations pattern and are either based on distance decay functions or central tendency measures to mathematically reverse the journey-to-crime.

Due to this focus on the mathematics little attention is given to characteristics of the crime such as the time when the crime is committed or the target backcloth that could provide useful information about the offender’s geographical behavior. Modus via is used to describe the manner in which the offender geographically behaves when committing his crime. Similar to modus operandi modus via can add focus on specific information of the crimes and  the crime locations surroundings that might be available in criminal investigations.

To move geographical offender profiling beyond the focus on the journey-to-crime I propose the use of the modus via to fine-tune geographical offender profiling. By using this information about the behavioral geography of the offender weights can be appointed to crime locations to fine-tune the geographical offender profile. This paper will address the possibilities of fine-tuning geographical offender profiling by using the modus via.  Illustrated with a case study and supported by the results of empirical studies on the geographical patterns of crime series, I will present the theoretical and methodological framework in this paper.
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The illegal treatment and trade of waste is an international problem which is widely assumed to be both evolving and growing. Emergent forms of criminality such as this often have the problem of data being in scarce supply, and as a result are difficult to study, and subsequently understand. In this paper we introduce the methodological concept of script analysis to assist a more objective assessment and understanding of illegal waste activity. This includes using crime scripts in two ways; to help identify data requirements, and as a tool to analyse illegal waste processes. We illustrate the utility of this methodology using waste electrical and electronic equipment. In doing so, we argue that this approach elicits a specific, focused account of what illegal activity has occurred, and nests it within the wider context of the waste management system. We anticipate that using this methodology will provide academics and practitioners a means of enhancing the investigation, detection and prevention of illegal waste activity.

Recently, against a backdrop of general reductions in acquisitive crime, increases have been observed in the frequency of metal theft offences. This is generally attributed to increases in metal prices in response to global demand exceeding supply. The main objective of this article was to examine the relationship between the price of copper and levels of copper theft, focusing specifically on copper cable theft from the British railway network. Results indicated a significant positive correlation between lagged increases in copper price and copper cable theft. No support was found for rival hypotheses concerning U.K. unemployment levels and the general popularity of theft as crime type. An ancillary aim was to explore offender modus operandi over time, which is discussed in terms of its implications for preventing copper cable theft. The authors finish with a discussion of theft of other commodities in price-volatile markets.