Crime is ubiquitous and poses a real danger to modern societies. Recent advances in fields such as criminology, sociology, physics, computer science, mathematics, and police science have shown that criminal activities depend strongly on the underlying network of actors involved. In this sense, the application of network science to crime fighting has shown a great boom in the last few years, establishing a strongly interdisciplinary community, which has attracted attention not only from academia but also from law-enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide.
Network science has been reshaping the way we think and approach the criminal phenomenon from basic to applied analysis. In this regard, this special issue aims to collect innovative research on the networked structure and dynamics of crime, paving the way to a clearer data-driven understanding of criminality with potential applications to crime fighting.
Papers of broader aspects of crime and their applications will also be considered as possible contributions for this special issue. Survey and review papers are welcome.
Manuscripts relevant to this special issue include, but are not limited to, the following:
- description of criminal networks
- data-mining for intelligence purposes
- modeling crime interactions
- dynamics of terrorist events
- disruption of illicit markets
- structure of criminal enterprise groups
- understanding crime as a complex system
- social dynamics and structure of transnational crime
- social dynamics of criminal hotspots in cities
- use of social media for crime analysis
- dynamics of cyber-crime
- use of communication data in criminal activity
- detection of criminal organizations in cities
- social network analysis of co-offending
- network-based tools for analyzing crime
- sensitivity analysis to investigate missing data and fuzzy boundaries
- spatial networks and their influence on crime patterns
- visualization of criminal networks
Important dates
Expression of interest and abstract submission: August 23, 2019
Abstract feedback notification: September 6, 2019
Paper submission deadline: October 18, 2019
Submission Instructions
We invite authors to submit a brief expression of interest containing a short outline or extended abstract (approx. 1000 words), including the topic, key concepts, methods, expected results, and conclusions. Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ansnetcrime19
The abstracts will be reviewed to determine if the submission is in the scope of this special issue.
Publication
Authors with accepted abstracts will be invited to submit their papers through the journal submission system for a full review and publication. Manuscripts can be submitted continuously until the deadline. Once a paper is submitted, the review process consisting of three peer reviews will start immediately (for details on the editorial process please contact ANS Editors-in-Chief). Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal. All accepted papers will be listed together in an online virtual special issue available on the journal website.
Guest editors
Bruno Requião da Cunha, brunorequiao.brdc@gmail.com
Federal Police, Brazil and MACSI, University of Limerick, Ireland
Gisela Bichler, gbichler@csusb.edu
California State University, USA
Luiz G. A. Alves, lgaalves@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University, USA
Marcos Oliveira, moliveira@tuta.io
GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany
Toby Davies, toby.davies@ucl.ac.uk
University College London, UK
For more information contact the editors.