A platform for discovering and sharing confidential ballistic crime data.

Criminal investigations generate large volumes of complex data that detectives have to analyse and understand. This data tends to be "siloed" within individual jurisdictions and re-using it in other investigations can be difficult. Investigations into trans-national crimes are hampered by the problem of discovering relevant data held by agencies in other countries and of sharing those data. Gun-crimes are one major type of incident that showcases this: guns are easily moved across borders and used in multiple crimes but finding that a weapon was used elsewhere in Europe is difficult. In this paper we report on the Odyssey Project, an EU-funded initiative to mine, manipulate and share data about weapons and crimes. The project demonstrates the automatic combining of data from disparate repositories for cross-correlation and automated analysis. The data arrive from different cultural/domains with multiple reference models using real-time data feeds and historical databases

Forensic Investigation of Static Bare footprints Sampled from Three Distinct Races; White British, Chinese And Indians.

Bare footprints, marks or impressions found at crime scenes can potentially provide criminal investigators with intelligence relating to the stature, gait of a perpetrator or aid the reconstruction of a crime scene. Currently, little is known about the inter- and intra-variations in bare footprint morphologies or the prevalence of certain characteristics in bare footprints from distinct races. To understand such variability requires large datasets of bare footprints. One of the primary aims of this thesis was to develop a novel, inexpensive method to record control samples and use the method to generate large datasets of bare footprints. The reliability of this method was investigated, and the qualitative and quantitative results indicated that there was repeatability and comparability between the new method (lotion) and the industry standard existing methods, for example, the inkless shoeprint kit and fingerprint ink. Following the successful testing of the lotion method, the lotion was used to gather static control bare footprints from three distinct races, White British (n = 25); Chinese (n =25); and Indian (n = 25). The quantitative data consisting of the footprint dimensions were converted to ratios. In addition, the foot outline was converted to morphological landmarks and the data was analysed using principle component analysis (PCA) and model-based cluster analysis (MBCA) to investigate the relationships between the three races. The results showed that the data from the three races could be placed into their respective racial groups using the x and y morphometric landmark coordinates. The resulting bare footprints data generated during this project was subsequently used to establish a database in Microsoft Access Database (MAD) to allow the data to be stored and new data to be added in, for future research work

One Step Ahead: The Police Transnational Firearms Intelligence Network (The 'Network').

Policing has been reconstructed from state provision to a mixture of public and private police providers. Bayley and Shearing (2001) have called for continuing research to enable a better understanding of the reconstruction. In addition, the transnational threat from organised crime groups (OCGs) and terrorists has increased (Lilley 2009). Therefore, this thesis examines a transnational police response to that threat and any resulting reconstruction of policing that occurs within a context of global policing theory. Transnational policing has previously been analysed by developing the Weberian theory of bureaucratisation. Police officers, with operational independence from their democratic nation state, meet to create transnational policing processes. This is known as 'Policeization' (Deflem 2002, p228) which is viewed by some critics as generating a loss of sovereignty and an increase in the global police state (Westmarland 2010). That tendency towards the global police state is confirmed more recently with a theory of global policing (Bowling and Sheptycki 2012). The increased threat from OCGs and terrorists has been accompanied by their increasing use of firearms (Bruggeman 2008, Jojarth 2009 and Rollins 2010) and my epistemological standpoint (Corbin-Dwyer and Buckle 2009) relates to the development of policing and intelligence gathering on the firearms threat. Therefore, this professional doctorate thesis has focused on the police transnational firearms intelligence network (the Network). Qualitative data has been gathered to establish whether the Network contributes to a reconstruction of policing. That data has been analysed using adaptive grounded theory (Chamaz 2006) and nodal network analysis (Shearing and Johnston 2010). As a result, this thesis articulates the UK firearms threat and the police response. The indications are that the Network is contributing to a glocal reconstruction of policing. The reconstruction includes pluralistic transnational action in partnership with other UK public organisations. There is no evidence of any privatisation of policing at the transnational level or any global control of UK policing through the Network