The Steiner tree Prosecutor: Revealing and disrupting criminal networks through a single suspect

Abstract

Disrupting a criminal organization requires a significant deployment of human resources, time, information, and financial investment. In the early stages of an investigation, details about a specific crime are typically scarce, often with no known suspect. The literature has shown that an effective approach for analyzing criminal organizations is social network analysis. This approach allows the use of traditional social network tools for analyzing criminal networks, as well as more sophisticated and recent tools. This article introduces a model called StPro, which enables the identification of members of a criminal organization starting from a single suspect. It utilizes linear optimization modeling based on Steiner trees. A suspect is used as the root node, and the resulting tree reveals a probable configuration of the criminal organization to which the suspect may belong. Its application to a real-world case demonstrates that there are no significant differences in effectiveness between the proposed model and the state-of-the-art in the literature, despite requiring less information. It also demonstrates how its application aided in the identification of a gang dedicated to violent crimes in Chile. These results highlight the strong capability of the proposed model to support criminal investigations.