Does it benefit an investigations system to be more focused on incidents or people?

In an ever-evolving landscape, Crime Analysts need excellent record-keeping and information-sharing systems.  Not only does good data provide crucial internal information, but now law enforcement agencies are recognizing the benefits of sharing this data in a number of ways: agency-to-agency, regionally, and even across state and national borders in certain cases. Crime analysts also now have access to numerous types of data including incident reports, intelligence data, arrest and detention facility files, and even civil records.  Each piece of data by itself is already valuable; however, when pieced together the results can help with all levels of investigations and provide life-saving insight.  Nothing is more important to accomplishing a law enforcement agency’s critical mission than having access to these various isolated streams of data, and consolidating them into an easily searchable and organized system.  

The Limits of Linear

Many databases including Record Management Systems (RMS) focus on an incident as the single-entry point of information input.  The incident is documented including reported offenses, offenders, demographic details, location data, gang activity, and more.  These systems are generally designed to record criminal incidents to provide accurate and detailed reporting of crimes committed.  Many system providers do this well, but when the incidents develop into cases or when trying to piece together trends or criminal profiles, the information in many systems are linear and event based, and revolve around the specific incident or case.  

A New Trend in Software

There is a new trend in criminal intelligence software like GangScope* or our new non-gang version IntelScope, which transform incident-based data into searchable person-based profiles… think Facebook for internal law enforcement investigations.  Profile pages can focus specifically on a subject like a criminal/person or based upon an automobile or address.  The profile pages are a collection of information presented in a centralized format for a specific subject with information like associates, links, photos, historical crimes, supporting documents, and detailed information.  Presenting information in this matter helps find links between criminals and offenders, identifying criminal networks and gangs, matching repetitive crimes, generating possible suspects, detecting useful patterns, and helping predict overall criminal activity.  With this approach, the person-based profile pages help identify the behavioral characteristics and connections behind the criminal data captured from historical crimes and intelligence.  

In the past manually building a criminal’s profile would take a considerable amount of time, but present day systems like GangScope use algorithms and analytics to create more accurate criminal profiles with significantly less time and effort.   

GangScope™ is a intelligence database that helps capture, analyze, search and share intelligence on criminals, gangs, and more. GangScope acts as a first-tier, internal database that manages data on known and suspected criminals and gang members. Intelligence is collected per incident and can includes qualifiers, associates, acquaintances (points of contact), witnesses, images, and documents. GangScope’s collection of detailed information aids in investigations, analysis and ultimately solving crime. The software complies with standards outlined by federal (28 CFR) policies. While complying with standards, GangScope™ boasts usability through simple yet extensive data mining via search, reports, profiles, and watches.

The overall goal of GangScope™ is to provide law enforcement personnel/ crime analyst/ correctional officers/prosecutors with maximum data through a friendly user interface while remaining cost-effective.  A non-gang version – IntelScope is also available if needed.

*A non-gang version is also available if needed.

To learn more or to schedule a full demo of our system – request a demo here. We would welcome the opportunity to show you how Gangscope can help your department organize and store your data in a secure and compliant way.

The GangScope Team