Fighting Criminal Activity Using Social Networks
Source: https://hackernoon.com/fight-crime-with-social-network-analysis-7a879d4a65ea
In this article, Daniel Barta discusses the how social network analysis can be used to fight crime. An important point that he brings out is that in a group one individual influences others more and this can be used to fight crime by identifying such individuals and rehabilitating them. As a result, these individuals would influence the other members of the gang to change their ways as well. To accomplish this, they use graphs which we’ve discussed in class and by observing the numbers of edges each node has, the influential individuals can be identified.
He offers a case study of Kansas City which is among the most violent cities where the police identified and called individuals from each violent group and offered them education and employment preparation which led to a significant reduction in homicides. It is clear that this approach managed to make the city safer while turning the criminals into productive members of society. On the other hand, would the police chase after the criminals with a view to arrest them and have them imprisoned it would have taken a lot of resources which wasn’t readily available.