Transnational criminal organizations typically comprise multiple interacting subnetworks, for example, a network to smuggle contraband into the U.S. and a network to move money out of the U.S. As a result, actions by or impacting one of these subnetworks may have cascading effects to other parts of the organization. Advancing our understanding of the operational structure of these networks is a homeland security priority.
CINA researchers, led by Professors Boleslaw Szymanski and Thomas Sharkey from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, are creating new analytical methods to help augment law enforcement investigations of transnational criminal organizations. The first method helps predict missing or incomplete data about the organization, potentially accelerating investigations. The second helps detect ‘communities’ of criminals, revealing the roles of individual criminals within the networks of the organization. A third method helps prescribe tactics to disrupt the criminal organization by modeling the interactions between its networks, helping to understand when it is effective to interdict different types of networks.
The impact of the team’s innovative approaches will allow for more efficient and more strategic interdiction by law enforcement. Szymanski and Sharkey indicate, “metrics may include measuring the impact of the approach on success of interdiction and the value of information, and whether or not it justifies the additional investigative time required to obtain more accurate information.”