Transnational Criminal Organization and the Law Enforcement Community

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The problem of transnational criminal organization poses some unique challenges to the law enforcement community. The scope of these organizations’ activities and personnel creates exponentially more work for law enforcement than relatively isolated or contained criminal acts by individuals or small groups. Random and personal crimes committed by individuals can usually be handled by police at the local level, as the investigation is limited to the known crime (or crimes) that have been committed and reported. In these cases, identifying and apprehending the perpetrator is possible through investigation of the evidence of the specific instance of crime. This is not the case with large criminal organizations. The scale of criminal activity committed by transnational criminal enterprises dwarfs those committed by lone “local” offenders. Organized criminal enterprises have a pattern of wide-scale criminal activity on a daily basis that involves the participation of many individuals. Transnational criminal organization are somewhat like the mythological nine-header Hydra – when one of its heads was cut off, it would quickly grow back. So, in order to any impact on the organizations as a whole, law enforcement must target their leadership and coordinate their arrests. To achieve this end, law enforcement must work meticulously to identify the entire scope of the criminal enterprise’s operations and map of it organization – identifying key personnel and associates. Not only that, but in the course of this intelligence gathering, law enforcement must also gather credible evidence that will help bring about a conviction in court. A main analytical technique that can be used against transnational criminal organization is network ... ... middle of paper ... ...ation, and attempts to form theories and predictions that can later be proven or disproven through investigation and collection of evidence. Useful investigative information that could come out of this analysis could include identification of individual’s roles in the organization, mapping out the structure and individual groups/cells of the criminal enterprise, as well as identification of supply chains, tactics techniques and procedures (TTP)/modus operandi (MO and indicators and warnings (I&W). Works Cited Jiminez, David, (2010). Week 2 Added Material Precision Computing Intelligence. CrimeLink - Association Matrix. Retrieved from http://www.pciusa.us/CL_AssocMatrix.aspx Xu, Jennifer and Hsinchun Chen. Criminal Network Analysis and Visualization: A Data Mining Perspective. Retrieved from http://ai.eller.arizona.edu/COPLINK/publications/crimenet/Xu_CACM.doc

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