A new Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique for crime investigations: GP-SMART

Sophie Curtis-Ham; Wim Bernasco; Oleg N. Medvedev; Devon L.L. Polaschek

doi:10.1002/jip.1585

A new Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique for crime investigations: GP-SMART

Sophie Curtis-Ham^*
, Wim Bernasco
, Oleg N. Medvedev
, Devon L.L. Polaschek

^*Corresponding author for this work

Spatial Economics

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This study developed and tested a new geographic profiling method for automating suspect prioritisation in crime investigations. The Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique (GP-SMART) maps suspects' activity locations available in police records—such as home addresses, family members' home addresses, prior offence locations, locations of non-crime incidents, and other contacts with police—and ranks suspects based on both the proximity and nature of these locations, relative to an input crime. In accuracy tests using solved burglary, robbery and extra-familial sex offence cases in New Zealand (n = 4511), GP-SMART ranked the offender at or near the top of the suspect list at rates greatly exceeding chance. Highlighting the benefit of its novel inclusion and differentiation of many different types of activity location, GP-SMART also outperformed baseline methods—approximating existing algorithms—that ranked suspects using only the proximity of their activity locations, or home addresses, to the input crime.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	103-117
Number of pages	15
Journal	Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling
Volume	19
Issue number	3
Early online date	28 Feb 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1585
Publication status	Published - Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the New Zealand Police staff who provided access to and advice on the data used in this research and who reviewed the manuscript prior to submission. This research forms part of the first author's PhD thesis, which is funded by a University of Waikato doctoral scholarship. Open access publishing facilitated by University of Waikato, as part of the Wiley - University of Waikato agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

Funders
Australian University Librarians

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

crime investigation
crime location choice
geographic profiling
police data
suspect prioritisation

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10.1002/jip.1585

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Cite this

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title = "A new Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique for crime investigations: GP-SMART",

abstract = "This study developed and tested a new geographic profiling method for automating suspect prioritisation in crime investigations. The Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique (GP-SMART) maps suspects' activity locations available in police records—such as home addresses, family members' home addresses, prior offence locations, locations of non-crime incidents, and other contacts with police—and ranks suspects based on both the proximity and nature of these locations, relative to an input crime. In accuracy tests using solved burglary, robbery and extra-familial sex offence cases in New Zealand (n = 4511), GP-SMART ranked the offender at or near the top of the suspect list at rates greatly exceeding chance. Highlighting the benefit of its novel inclusion and differentiation of many different types of activity location, GP-SMART also outperformed baseline methods—approximating existing algorithms—that ranked suspects using only the proximity of their activity locations, or home addresses, to the input crime.",

keywords = "crime investigation, crime location choice, geographic profiling, police data, suspect prioritisation",

author = "Sophie Curtis-Ham and Wim Bernasco and Medvedev, \{Oleg N.\} and Polaschek, \{Devon L.L.\}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Authors. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling published by John Wiley \& Sons Ltd.",

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A new Geographic Profiling Suspect Mapping And Ranking Technique for crime investigations: GP-SMART

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

Persistent URL (handle)

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Cite this