Linkage analysis using geographical proximity: a test of the efficacy of distance measures

Linkage analysis using geographical proximity: a test of the efficacy of distance measures Shumpei Haginoya, Aiko Hanayama, Tamae Koike Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.51-62 The purpose of this paper was to compare the accuracy of linking crimes using geographical proximity between three distance measures: Euclidean (distance measured by the length of a straight line between two locations), Manhattan (distance obtained by summing north-south distance and east-west distance) and the shortest route distances. A total of 194 cases committed by 97 serial residential burglars in Aomori Prefecture in Japan between 2004 and 2015 were used in the present study. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare linked (two offenses committed by the same offender) and unlinked (two offenses committed by different offenders) pairs for each distance measure. Discrimination accuracy between linked and unlinked crime pairs was evaluated using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The Mann–Whitney U test showed that the distances of the linked pairs were significantly shorter than those of the unlinked pairs for all distance measures. Comparison of the AUCs showed that the shortest route distance achieved significantly higher accuracy compared with the Euclidean distance, whereas there was no significant difference between the Euclidean and the Manhattan distance or between the Manhattan a...
Source: Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice - Category: Criminology Authors: Source Type: research