Abstract
Research has shown that the majority of offences are committed by a minority of offenders. Therefore, any method to help identify prolific/serial offenders is of benefit to the police. Behavioural Crime Linkage (BCL) is a method of identifying series of offences committed by the same person(s) using the behaviour displayed during the offence. This can include, but is not limited to, target selection, control and weapon use, approach, property stolen, and temporal and spatial trends. This chapter will explain the theoretical framework for BCL and common methods for testing the accuracy of this method (e.g. logistic regression, Receiver Operating Characteristic ). The chapter will then outline how BCL has been applied in robbery. It will discuss how the success of BCL is influenced by factors such as type of location (e.g. urban versus rural) and group offending (e.g. can you link offences committed by groups?). This chapter will draw heavily on the PhD research of the author but will cite other literature (e.g. evidence to support the theoretical framework for BCL) where relevant.
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Burrell, A. (2022). Behavioural Crime Linkage. In: Robbery. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93173-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93173-5_5
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