ABSTRACT
Although crime linkage analysis (CLA) has received increasing attention by researchers in recent years, the focus of such activity remains largely an academic one, with little or no explicit reference to the practitioner community. This is most starkly reflected in the perceived holy grail of such endeavors, to reliably and accurately find linked crimes within a large dataset of similar offenses. This demonstrates a somewhat naïve confusion between comparative case analysis (CCA) and CLA and at present does little to assist
Introduction 173 Definitional Clarity 174 Behavioral Investigative Advice 175 Investigative Approach 176
Theoretical Considerations 176 Methodological Considerations 178 Practice 179 Report Extract Example 182 Further Considerations 187
Evidential Approach 188 Legal Context 188 Current Practice 189
Proposed Approach 190 Example 191 Further Considerations 192
Research Agenda 193 Conclusions 194 References 194
practitioners in their endeavors to link crimes to a common perpetrator, from either an intelligence or evidential perspective.
