NCJ Number
74219
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 47 Issue: 12 Dated: (December 1980) Pages: 42-45
Date Published
1980
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article by a Police Crime Analysis Supervisor describes five analytic tools for complex criminal investigations: link analysis, event flow charting, commodity flow charting, financial profiling, and inference development.
Abstract
Link analysis graphically summarizes a complex set of relationships between a large number of data points. Although persons and organizations are most commonly used as data points, telephone numbers, street addresses, vehicle license plates, or any other data point may be used. Event flow charting, unlike link diagramming, allows for the display of a dynamic process which involves movement either over time or through a system. Like link diagrams, however, flow charts must be interpreted in order to have clear meaning. Commodity flow charting seeks to portray the movement of a tangible item through a system. The item may be money, narcotics, guns, stolen goods, or any other commodity of interest. The use of financial profiles allows investigators to order financial data concerning an individual, group, or organization so as to establish a pattern of financial behavior. The completed analysis should include such items as change in financial behavior, justification of such a change by legitimate circumstances, and correspondence of the change in time, type, and magnitude with alleged or suspected criminal activity. Finally, inference development, is derived from and dependent upon analyses of the preceding four models. Six charts are included.