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Whendunnit: Unraveling the Hidden Patterns in the Timing of Serial Crime

NCJ Number
201482
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 30 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2003 Pages: 144-147
Author(s)
Dan Helms
Date Published
July 2003
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the use of time analysis to stop serial criminals and outlines a new software package designed to calculate temporal patterns.
Abstract
In the world of criminal activity, a small group of repeat offenders is responsible for the majority of crimes. As such, tools that assist police officers in predicting and thus stopping serial crimes are in high demand. Unfortunately, despite a burgeoning of computer software that allows police officers to predict different variables about criminal activities, such as new geographic profiling software, there has been a relative shortage of tools designed to calculate the temporal patterns underlying serial crime in order to make timing forecasts. Another obstacle to accurately forecasting the timing of criminal events is that so much crime is unwitnessed that it often takes professional mathematicians to determine the time frame of criminal activities. The article introduces the reader to TimeScan, a software package designed to make advanced temporal analysis practical for crime analysts. TimeScan, designed by crime analysts, is able to read and analyze several types of data formats, making it compatible for use with other programs. This is helpful because it allows crime analysts to place space and time together in a criminal profile, rather than dealing with these two variables as if they are totally separate. The article concludes by noting the increasing sophistication of both crime analysis techniques and the software used to calculate criminal profiles.

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