Geographic profiling in Nazi Berlin: fact and fiction

Geographic profiling uses the locations of connected crime sites to make inferences about the probable location of the offender’s ‘anchor point’ (usually a home, but sometimes a workplace). We show how the basic ideas of the method were used in a Gestapo investigation that formed the basis of a classic German novel about domestic resistance to the Nazis during the Second World War. We use modern techniques to re-analyse this case, and show that these successfully locate the Berlin home address of Otto and Elise Hampel, who had distributed hundreds of anti-Nazi postcards, after analysing just 34 of the 214 incidents that took place before their arrest. Our study provides the first empirical evidence to support the suggestion that analysis of minor terrorism-related acts such as graffiti and theft could be used to help locate terrorist bases before more serious incidents occur

Using geographic profiling to locate elusive nocturnal animals: A case study with spectral tarsiers

© 2015 The Zoological Society of London. Estimates of biodiversity, population size, population density and habitat use have important implications for management of both species and habitats, yet are based on census data that can be extremely difficult to collect. Traditional assessment techniques are often limited by time and money and by the difficulties of working in certain habitats, and species become more difficult to find as population size decreases. Particular difficulties arise when studying elusive species with cryptic behaviours. Here, we show how geographic profiling (GP) - a statistical tool originally developed in criminology to prioritize large lists of suspects in cases of serial crime - can be used to address these problems. We ask whether GP can be used to locate sleeping sites of spectral tarsiers Tarsius tarsier in Sulawesi, Southeast Asia, using as input the positions at which tarsier vocalizations were recorded in the field. This novel application of GP is potentially of value as tarsiers are cryptic and nocturnal and can easily be overlooked in habitat assessments (e.g. in dense rainforest). Our results show that GP provides a useful tool for locating sleeping sites of this species, and indeed analysis of a preliminary dataset during field work strongly suggested the presence of a sleeping tree at a previously unknown location; two sleeping trees were subsequently found within 5m of the predicted site. We believe that GP can be successfully applied to locating the nests, dens or roosts of elusive animals such as tarsiers, potentially improving estimates of population size with important implications for management of both species and habitats.We thank Operation Wallacea for supporting S.C.F. in thisproject and for providing logistical support for the fieldwork,and Aidan Kelsey for invaluable assistance in the field. Wethank the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) andKementerian Riset dan Teknologi Republik Indonesia(RISTEK) for providing permission to undertake the work(RISTEK permit no. 211/SIP/FRP/SM/VI/2013, and BalaiKonservasi Sumber Daya Alam (BKSDA) for theirassistance

Spatial targeting of infectious disease control: identifying multiple, unknown sources

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Early Identification of Violent Criminal Gang Members

Gang violence is a major problem in the United States accounting for a large fraction of homicides and other violent crime. In this paper, we study the problem of early identification of violent gang members. Our approach relies on modified centrality measures that take into account additional data of the individuals in the social network of co-arrestees which together with other arrest metadata provide a rich set of features for a classification algorithm. We show our approach obtains high precision and recall (0.89 and 0.78 respectively) in the case where the entire network is known and out-performs current approaches used by law-enforcement to the problem in the case where the network is discovered overtime by virtue of new arrests - mimicking real-world law-enforcement operations. Operational issues are also discussed as we are preparing to leverage this method in an operational environment.Comment: SIGKDD 201

Geographic profiling as a novel spatial tool for targeting infectious disease control

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Geographic profiling is a statistical tool originally developed in criminology to prioritise large lists of suspects in cases of serial crime. Here, we use two data sets - one historical and one modern - to show how it can be used to locate the sources of infectious disease.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>First, we re-analyse data from a classic epidemiological study, the 1854 London cholera outbreak. Using 321 disease sites as input, we evaluate the locations of 13 neighbourhood water pumps. The Broad Street pump - the outbreak's source- ranks first, situated in the top 0.2% of the geoprofile. We extend our study with an analysis of reported malaria cases in Cairo, Egypt, using 139 disease case locations to rank 59 mosquitogenic local water sources, seven of which tested positive for the vector <it>Anopheles sergentii</it>. Geographic profiling ranks six of these seven sites in positions 1-6, all in the top 2% of the geoprofile. In both analyses the method outperformed other measures of spatial central tendency.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We suggest that geographic profiling could form a useful component of integrated control strategies relating to a wide variety of infectious diseases, since evidence-based targeting of interventions is more efficient, environmentally friendly and cost-effective than untargeted intervention.</p

Variations in the Journey from Crime: Examples from Tiger Kidnapping

The current paper explores the journey offenders make after their offence through a series of Tiger Kidnap offences from the North and South of Ireland. Tiger Kidnap is the abduction of a person of importance to a victim (generally a bank manager) in which that person is used as collateral until the victim complies with the requests of the offenders. Three stages of the offences were highlighted; 1. The Journey from the abduction location to the hostage location 2. The abduction location to the robbery location and 3. The robbery location to the money exchange location. Analysis found significant difference between offences in the North and South for stages 1 and 2 but not for stage 3. This is due to the type of offenders committing the offence; for example, offences in the North being committed by ex-paramilitary offenders. Further study should focus on understanding complex Tiger Kidnap offences

Spatial and environmental consistency in serial sexual assault

This study examines the crime patterns of 76 New Zealand serial sexual offenders in order to determine the extent to which offenders display locational consistency in their choice of crime locations. More specifically, the hypothesis was that there would be intraseries consistency in the distances travelled (spatial consistency) and the characteristics of the crime sites selected (environmental consistency) by serial sexual offenders. For spatial consistency to be tested, the distances travelled from home to offend and the criminal range for each offence series were analysed. Support was found for spatial consistency, and, in line with much overseas research, it was also found that the offenders typically did not travel very far from home to offend (median distance of 3 km). The environmental consistency measure was made up of various physical, temporal, and contextual variables that described the environmental characteristics of an offence. As hypothesised, it was found that offenders displayed intraseries environmental consistency in offence site selection beyond the level of that expected by chance. The implications of this both for understanding offender spatial decision making and for geographical profiling are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Nudging down theft from insecure vehicles. A pilot study

This report presents the preliminary findings of a pilot study to reduce thefts from cars committed against insecure vehicles, using the behavioural insights or ‘nudge approach’. The recipients of the ‘nudges’ were potential victims of theft from insecure vehicles living in high rate areas for this crime, where a bespoke leaflet campaign was developed to nudge vehicle owners into thinking more carefully when leaving their vehicles unattended, particularly when left on their driveways overnight. Although somewhat tentative at this stage, the preliminary findings indicate that the percentage of thefts committed against insecure vehicles in the two treatment areas was reduced significantly when compared with the two control group areas where no nudge interventions were introduced. This demonstrates that if appropriate nudges (grounded in psychological theory) are coupled with and delivered by appropriate messengers, the prosocial behavioural change can be encouraged which can lead to a reduction in criminal behaviour and opportunities for crim