Lasso: Linkage Analysis Of Serious Sexual Offences A Decision Support System For Crime Analysts And Investigators

Abstract

One of the first and most important considerations when investigating a serious sexual offence is to see if the offence can be linked to others. If a link can be established then there is a very considerable dividend in terms of new evidence and lines of enquiry to be followed. It also raises what is already a serious incident to a higher level of significance with a corresponding increase in the resources allotted to investigation of the series of crimes. Computerised decision support systems which employ techniques from Artificial Intelligence are widely used in business and finance to assist practitioners in arriving at justifiable conclusions.In principle this is no different from the activities of a crime analyst or investigator in finding likely matches for a current crime in the overall set of crimes.