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Behavioural case linkage with solved and

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Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Forensic Science International

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forsciint

Behavioural case linkage with solved and unsolved crimes

Matthew Tonkin a,*, Jessica Woodhams b, Ray Bull c, John W. Bond d
a
School of Psychology, The University of Leicester, Room 352, Maurice Shock Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 9HN, United Kingdom
b
School of Psychology, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
c
School of Psychology, The University of Leicester, Room HWB 0/06, Henry Wellcome Building, Lancaster Road, Leicester LE1 9HN, United Kingdom
d
Department of Chemistry, The University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Offender behaviour is used to distinguish between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes)
Received 22 February 2012 and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes) through behavioural case linkage. There is
Received in revised form 21 May 2012 growing evidence to support the use of behavioural case linkage by investigative organisations such as
Accepted 23 May 2012
the police, but this research is typically limited to samples of solved crime that do not reflect how this
Available online 15 June 2012
procedure is used in real life. The current paper extends previous research by testing the potential for
behavioural case linkage in a sample containing both solved and unsolved crimes. Discrimination
Keywords:
accuracy is examined across crime categories (e.g. a crime pair containing a car theft and a residential
Linkage analysis
Comparative case analysis
burglary), across crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing a residential burglary and a commercial
Behavioural case linkage burglary), and within crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing two residential burglaries) using the
Unsolved crime number of kilometres (intercrime distance) and the number of days (temporal proximity) between
Serial crime offences to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The intercrime distance and/or the
temporal proximity were able to achieve statistically significant levels of discrimination accuracy across
crime categories, across crime types, and within crime types as measured by Receiver Operating
Characteristic (ROC) analysis. This suggests that behavioural case linkage can be used to assist the
investigation, detection and prosecution of prolific and versatile serial offenders.
ß 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction to hide their forensic identity when committing crime (e.g. by

Investigators, such as the police, frequently attempt to identify
groups of so-called linked crimes that have been committed by the
same offender [1,2]. The advantages of doing so include increasing
the likelihood of successful detection and prosecution of the
person/s responsible by combining the evidence collected across
several investigations [2]. Investigators have a variety of techni-
ques from forensic science available to them to assist in this task,
such as DNA matching, fingerprint analysis, bitemark analysis, and
the analysis of footwear impressions [3–6]. In the context of
linking crime, these techniques are used to identify a statistically
significant degree of match between the physical material
obtained at two or more crime scenes, which allows the
investigator to infer that the same person/s were responsible.
However, such physical material is not always available to link
crimes, particularly since some offenders may be quickly learning
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 07835905940.
E-mail addresses: mjt25@le.ac.uk (M. Tonkin), j.woodhams@bham.ac.uk
(J. Woodhams), rhb10@le.ac.uk (R. Bull), jwb13@le.ac.uk (J.W. Bond).
wearing gloves, masks and, in the case of sexual offences,
condoms). For example, only 12% of crime scenes examined in
England and Wales during 2004/2005 yielded DNA evidence and
only 6% yielded samples that were suitable to be loaded onto the
National DNA Database [7]. Also, even when this material is
available to link crimes, processing this information can be time-
consuming and expensive, which leaves many investigative
organisations without the resources to process large volumes of
physical material on a regular basis [8].
For these reasons investigative organisations use behavioural
evidence in addition to or in the absence of physical evidence to
link crime [1,9–11]. This requires an investigator to, first,
determine whether a stable pattern of behaviour exists across
the various crimes (behavioural consistency) and, second, whether
that pattern is sufficiently different from the patterns displayed in
other crimes (behavioural distinctiveness) to infer that the same
person might be responsible [11,12].
A growing body of research has developed to support the
principles of consistency and distinctiveness that underpin
behavioural case linkage. This research has tested whether
offender crime scene behaviour can be used to distinguish

0379-0738/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2012.05.017
 Author's personal copy
M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153
between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes)
and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes). It has
been found that certain types of offender behaviour can be used to
achieve statistically significant levels of discrimination accuracy in
this task. In particular, the number of kilometres and the number of
days between offences have been shown to be particularly
effective with samples of burglary [13–16], robbery [17] and car
theft [18]. In terms of violent and sexual crime, behaviours that
reflect the level of pre-offence planning, the offender’s methods of
controlling the victim/witnesses, and target characteristics have all
been effective with samples of homicide [19,20], rape/sexual
assault [1,2,21–23] and robbery [17].
This research, however, has restricted itself to testing beha-
vioural consistency, distinctiveness and discrimination accuracy
with samples that are homogenous in terms of crime type (i.e. only
one type of crime, e.g. residential burglary is studied in isolation)
[24]. This is problematic because the majority of offenders
(particularly the most prolific) tend to commit a variety of
different types of crime rather than specialising in individual types
[25–28]. Consequently, investigators are regularly faced with
apprehending versatile offenders who have committed crime
series that contain several different types of offence. Tonkin et al.
[24], therefore, investigated whether simple measures of offender
behaviour could be used to link crimes from different crime types
and categories, which would help investigators to detect and
prosecute versatile serial offenders more successfully. In their
study, Tonkin et al. [24] used the Home Office counting rules for
recorded crime, which provide a national standard for recording
crime amongst police forces in England and Wales. At the time of
the study, these rules recognised 156 individual types of crime that
were grouped into nine crime categories.1 Tonkin et al. [24] tested
the ability of offender behaviour to discriminate between linked
and unlinked crimes at three different levels. The first level,
‘‘within crime types’’, examined discrimination accuracy between
crimes of the same type (e.g. could offender behaviour be used to
determine whether two residential burglaries were committed by
the same person or not?). This replicated the way in which
previous research had tested the principles of behavioural case
linkage [e.g. 13,17,18]. The second level, ‘‘across crime types’’,
tested discrimination accuracy with crimes that were from the
same broad category of crime but of different specific types (e.g. a
residential burglary and a commercial burglary). The third level,
‘‘across crime categories’’, examined discrimination accuracy with
crimes that were from completely different crime categories (e.g. a
residential burglary and a rape). No previous research had tested
discrimination accuracy across crime types (level 2) or across
crime categories (level 3). Using the number of kilometres and the
number of days between offences (referred to as the intercrime
distance and temporal proximity, respectively) it was possible to
discriminate between linked and unlinked crimes at all three levels
of analysis, with linked crimes tending to occur significantly closer
together in space and time than unlinked crimes. Importantly, the
level of accuracy that was achieved when linking across crime
types and across crime categories was comparable to that achieved
when linking within crime types. These findings, therefore, provide
guidance on conducting behavioural case linkage with crime series
that contain several different types of offence, which has the
potential to contribute significantly to the detection and prosecu-
tion of versatile serial offenders.
1 3
Violent offences (containing 38 individual crime types), sexual offences
(containing 31 types), burglary offences (containing 7 types), drug offences
(containing 4 types), robbery (containing 2 types), theft or handling offences
(containing 16 types), fraud or forgery (containing 16 types), criminal damage
offences (containing 11 types), and other offences (containing 31 types).
147
However, it is important to note that a degree of error should be
expected when linking crime using offender behaviour (both
within and across crime types/categories). This is indicated by the
fact that the Area Under the Curve (AUC)2 values achieved in this
research fall below the maximum value of 1.00; for example, the
intercrime distance has achieved AUCs ranging from 0.72 to 0.97
with samples of burglary and car theft [13–16,18] and a
combination of offender behaviour has achieved AUCs ranging
from 0.70 to 0.96 with samples of homicide, rape/sexual assault,
and commercial robbery [1,17,19,21]. This variation in the AUC is
unsurprising since an offender’s behaviour may vary across a series
of crimes (thereby causing errors in the linkage process) due to any
number of situational factors, such as the presence or absence of
victim resistance, or as a consequence of the maturation and
learning that can come with criminal experience (see [11] for a
review). Consequently, practitioners must expect both false
positive and false negative errors when linking crime behaviou-
rally. This does not mean, however, that behavioural case linkage is
worthless; it simply means that researchers and practitioners
should be realistic in their expectations of case linkage effective-
ness.
In summary, there is a growing body of work to suggest that
behavioural case linkage has the potential to work in a reliable
manner, provided the correct behaviours are used and the findings
are interpreted with an appropriate degree of caution.3 But, this
work can be criticised for its reliance on samples of solved crime. In
a real-life scenario, an investigator would be highly unlikely to link
a solved crime with another solved crime because there would be
no investigative benefit. Consequently, the existing research has
not tested behavioural case linkage in a way that reflects its use in
practice (where behavioural case linkage is conducted with
unsolved crimes). Indeed, the estimates of discrimination accuracy
derived from samples of solved crime may be unrealistically high
compared with what we would expect to see in real life, because
crimes that are solved may be more consistent and distinctive than
those that remain unsolved [12,13]. For example, an offender who
commits crime in a very restricted geographical area may be easier
to apprehend than a more transient offender. If this were true,
solved crime series would tend to have shorter intercrime
distances than unsolved crime series, thereby leading to an
artificially high AUC value when discrimination accuracy was
tested with a sample composed solely of solved crime. It is,
therefore, important to test discrimination accuracy under
conditions that more closely reflect how behavioural case linkage
is practised in reality.
In reality, there are two scenarios in which behavioural case
linkage would be conducted [12]. In the first, an investigator would
be presented with a specific crime (often a solved crime) and they
would be asked to search amongst their databases for unsolved
crimes that were linked to this particular index offence (reactive
case linkage). In this situation the investigator would be required
to link a solved crime with an unsolved crime (referred to as
solved–unsolved links). In the second scenario the investigator
would not have a specific index offence, but would instead be
asked to search proactively through the organisation’s databases to
identify potential linkages (proactive case linkage). Typically, this
2
The AUC has been used by some researchers of behavioural case linkage to
provide an estimate of discrimination accuracy in the linkage task. The AUC can
range from 1.00 (indicating perfect positive prediction) to 0.00 (indicating perfect
negative prediction), with an AUC of 0.50 indicating a chance level of discrimination
accuracy.
However, it should be noted that some researchers have questioned the
existence of offender behavioural consistency altogether, thereby casting doubt on
the potential for behavioural case linkage [e.g. 29,30]. But, the weight of evidence
suggests that behavioural consistency and distinctiveness do exist at a level that
allows statistically significant discrimination accuracy in this task.
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148 M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153

Table 1
A summary of the six crime pair subsets included in the analyses.

Crime pair type Linkage status Description Example

Across crime Linked n = 47 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes from different A personal robbery committed by offender
categories pairs Home Officea crime categories that have been committed by 1 was paired with a burglary in a dwelling
the same offender. also committed by offender 1.

Unlinked n = 47 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes from different A burglary in a dwelling committed by
pairs Home Office categories that have been committed by different offenders. offender 1 was paired with the theft of
a motor vehicle committed by offender 2.

Across crime Linked n = 32 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes from the same Personal robbery committed by offender
types pairs Home Office crime category that are of different specific crime types. 1 was paired with a commercial robbery
These two crimes have been committed by the same offender. also committed by offender 1.

Unlinked n = 32 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes from the same A shoplifting offense committed by offender
pairs Home Office crime category that are of different specific crime types. 1 was paired with a theft from a vehicle
These two crimes have been committed by different offenders. committed by offender 2.

Within crime Linked n = 53 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes committed by Two personal robbery crimes committed
types pairs the same offender that are of the same specific crime type. by offender 1 were paired.

Unlinked n = 53 This subset includes crime pairs that contain two crimes committed by Two burglaries in a dwelling committed by
pairs different offenders that are of the same specific crime type. different offenders were paired.
a
The Home Office is the government body responsible for setting definitions of crime that police in England and Wales follow.

would involve linking an unsolved crime with another unsolved 2. Method

crime (unsolved–unsolved links). In these two scenarios there is no
situation where an investigator would be required to conduct case
linkage with two crimes that have already been solved (solved–
solved links). Empirical research into behavioural case linkage
would, therefore, be more realistic if it sampled both solved and
unsolved crimes and only tested discrimination accuracy with
solved–unsolved links and unsolved–unsolved links (thereby
excluding the solved–solved links that have traditionally been
used in previous research). This represents a fundamental change
in methodology, which may provide a more realistic evidence base
upon which to develop the practice of behavioural case linkage.
To facilitate such an approach, it has been suggested that
researchers could use samples of solved and unsolved crime that
have been linked via DNA evidence [12,31]. This would allow the
necessary solved–unsolved and unsolved–unsolved links to be
established. Only one existing study of behavioural case linkage
has been able to collate a sample of DNA-linked series, which was a
study of 22 serial rapists and their offences in South Africa [32]. A
combination of 114 offender behaviours4 was able to facilitate a
statistically significant level of discrimination accuracy
(AUC = 0.88). These findings suggest that behavioural case linkage
has the potential to work when applied to samples that contain
both solved and unsolved crimes, thereby providing further
support for its use in practice. However, Woodhams and
Labuschagne’s [32] study shares the same limitation of previous
research, which is that it only considers the possibility of linking
within crime types.
The current paper, therefore, reports an examination of
behavioural consistency, distinctiveness, and discrimination accu-
racy with a sample that contained both solved and unsolved crimes
that were linked via DNA evidence and had been committed by a
group of versatile serial offenders. In particular, this research tested
whether Tonkin et al.’s [24] recent findings could be replicated in a
sample containing both solved and unsolved offences. This
provided a more realistic insight into the potential contribution
of behavioural case linkage in practice.
4
The behaviours tested by Woodhams and Labuschagne [32] included sexual
behaviours (such as whether the victim was penetrated anally), approach
behaviours (such as whether the victim was approached by the offender in private
or in public), and control behaviours (such as whether the victim was physically
restrained in any way). The full list of behaviours is reported by Woodhams and
Labuschagne [32].
2.1. The data
An electronic search of Northamptonshire Police databases was made to identify
all crimes that had been linked to a common offender via DNA evidence between
2005 and 2009.5 Northamptonshire is a county in the East Midlands of England,
with an approximate area of 2364 km2 and a population of approximately 687,300
in 2010. From this sample, all offenders were identified who had committed at least
two crimes during the study period (with at least one of their crimes being classed
as unsolved). It was necessary to include at least one unsolved crime for each
offender so that when the linked crime pairs were formed (as described in the
Section 2.2) there were no solved–solved links included in the tests of
discrimination accuracy. This ensured that the current research methodology
was closer than previous research to the real life situation in which case linkage is
conducted. One hundred and thirty-two offenders were identified who had
committed two or more offences between 2005 and 2009 within Northampton-
shire. It has been common in previous research to select a constant number of
offences per offender to ensure that prolific offenders (who may display unusually
high or low consistency and distinctiveness in their offending behaviour) do not
exert an undue influence on the analyses [e.g. 1,17,22]. Consistent with Tonkin
et al.’s [24] original methodology, two offences per offender were randomly
selected (ensuring that at least one of these offences was classed as unsolved), thus
creating a sample of 264 solved and unsolved offences committed by 132 offenders.
One hundred and ninety-five (74%) of these offences were unsolved and 69 were
solved (26%).6 The geographical location of each offence (stored as an x, y
coordinate) and the time and date that the offence was reported to the police were
extracted for analysis.
2.2. Design and procedure
The methodology described by Tonkin et al. [24] was followed. Three different
types of crime pair were created: (1) across crime categories; (2) across crime types;
(3) within crime types (see Table 1). Cross-category pairs contained two crimes
from different Home Office categories of crime (e.g. a residential burglary was
5
As with Tonkin et al. [24], a number of crime types were excluded because they
do not typically have definite offence locations and times, which makes it difficult to
calculate meaningful intercrime distance and temporal proximity values (e.g.
crimes included under the Home Office categories of ‘drugs offences’, ‘fraud or
forgery offences’, and ‘other offences’ were excluded).
6
For the purposes of this study, crimes that were classed as ‘‘detected’’ on
Northamptonshire Police databases were considered to be solved, whereas those
classed as ‘‘undetected’’ were considered unsolved. A crime is classed as detected
when there is sufficient evidence for the case to be submitted to the Crown
Prosecution Service (the CPS are the government department responsible for
prosecuting criminal offences in England and Wales). It should be noted that CPS
policy does not allow a DNA match between a suspect and a crime scene to be
submitted as evidence of guilt without corroborating evidence. Thus, it was possible
in this study for two crimes to be linked via DNA evidence (and, therefore,
considered to be committed by the same person), but for one of these crimes to be
classed as solved (i.e. detected) and the other to be classed as unsolved (i.e.
undetected).
 Author's personal copy
M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153
paired with a rape). Cross-type pairs contained two crimes from the same broad
category of crime but of different specific types (e.g. a residential burglary was
paired with a commercial burglary). Within-type pairs contained two crimes from
the same broad category of crime and of the same specific type (e.g. a residential
burglary was paired with a residential burglary). Both linked and unlinked crime
pairs were created for each of the three different types of pair, thus creating a total
of six crime pair subsets (see Table 1). The linked crime pairs contained two crimes
that had been committed by the same offender, whereas the unlinked pairs
contained two crimes that had been committed by different offenders. In this
methodology the unlinked crime pairs represented the degree of behavioural
consistency/distinctiveness one would expect to see through chance, so any
consistency/distinctiveness observed in the linked pairs above and beyond that in
the unlinked pairs was evidence to support the potential viability of behavioural
case linkage. For each crime pair the number of kilometres (the intercrime distance)
and the number of days (temporal proximity) separating the two offences was
calculated. These procedures prepared the data for analysis.
2.3. Data analysis
The six crime pair subsets were compared statistically to determine whether
they differed in the intercrime distance and temporal proximity. Statistically
significant differences between the linked and unlinked subsets (i.e. linked cross-
category versus unlinked cross-category; linked cross-type versus unlinked cross-
type; linked within-type versus unlinked within-type) demonstrated the potential
for behavioural case linkage to work in a statistical sense when compared with
chance. If these statistical differences were similar in magnitude (as measured by
the effect size) and there was no difference between the three linked pair subsets in
terms of the intercrime distance and temporal proximity, this would suggest that
the potential for linking crime was comparable across crime categories, across
crime types, and within crime types [24].
To examine discrimination accuracy, binary logistic regression analysis was
conducted using a Leave-One-Out (LOO) classification. Three regression analyses
were run at each level of analysis (i.e. across crime categories; across crime types;
within crime types), two of which were direct regressions that examined the
independent ability of intercrime distance or temporal proximity to predict linkage
status and one of which was a stepwise regression that examined the combined
predictive value of intercrime distance and temporal proximity. The stepwise
regression, therefore, identified the most simple and efficient statistical model that
maximised discrimination accuracy with these data. These nine regression analyses
(3 regressions  3 levels of analysis) produced predicted probability values that
were used to conduct Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses. ROC
analysis provided an index of discrimination accuracy called the AUC, which can
range from 0 (indicating complete inaccuracy in the discrimination task) to 1
(indicating complete accuracy). Typically, AUC values of 0.50–0.70 are considered
to indicate a low level of accuracy, values of 0.70–0.90 are moderate, and values of
0.90–1.00 are high [33].
When testing discrimination accuracy, it is important that the estimates of
accuracy have a reasonable likelihood of generalising beyond the sample studied
[34]. This is particularly important in the current area of research, where the aim is
to develop findings that can be used to guide future investigations. Tonkin et al. [24]
used split-half cross-validation to test the generalisability of their findings.
However, this method only splits the data once, which increases the likelihood of a
good (or bad) fit occurring through chance, particularly when sample size is small
[35,36]. To overcome this potential limitation, cross-validation was provided by the
LOO classification method in this study, which performs multiple splits of the data.
As explained by Woodhams and Labuschagne [32], this method involves removing
Table 2
Post hoc comparisons of the six crime pair subsets in terms of the intercrime distance and temporal proximity.
Comparisona Intercrime distance
LCrCat–UCrCat Z = 5.08, n = 47, p < .001*, r = 0.74
Median (km): LCrCat = 1.73; UCrCat = 18.31
LCrTyp–UCrTyp Z = 3.80, n = 32, p < .001*, r = 0.67
Median (km): LCrTyp = 1.77; UCrTyp = 13.90
LWi–UWi Z = 4.72, n = 53, p < .001*, r = 0.65
Median (km): LWi = 3.09; UWi = 19.70
LCrCat–LCrTyp Z = 0.88, n = 32, p > .05, r = 0.16
Median (km): LCrCat = 1.73; LCrTyp = 1.77
LCrCat–LWi Z = 2.10, n = 47, p = 0.04, r = 0.31
Median (km): LCrCat = 1.73; LWi = 3.09
LCrTyp–LWi Z = 0.06, n = 32, p > .05, r = 0.01
Median (km): LCrTyp = 1.77; LWi = 3.09
a
LCrCat = linked cross-category pairs; UCrCat = unlinked cross-category pairs; LCrTyp = linked cross-type pairs; UCrTyp = unlinked cross-type pairs; LWi = linked within-
type pairs; UWi = unlinked within-type pairs.
*
Significance at the adjusted alpha level (a = 0.008).
149
each crime pair from the sample one at a time and the remaining data are then used
to develop a logistic regression model, which is subsequently applied to the
extracted pair to produce a predicted probability value. This pair is then returned to
the dataset and the procedure repeated with the next pair until a probability value
has been calculated for all pairs [32]. These probability values were subsequently
used to produce ROC curves that indicated discrimination accuracy. Consequently,
the logistic regression models are developed and tested on different samples, which
provides reassurance that the estimates of discrimination accuracy have a
reasonable likelihood of generalising to future crimes in this jurisdiction. However,
split-half validation was also performed on the data and a further nine ROC curves
constructed to examine whether the two methods of cross-validation produced
comparable results, thereby increasing confidence that the current findings could
be reliably compared with those of Tonkin et al. [24].
It should be noted that non-parametric statistics were appropriate throughout
the analyses due to the distributions of intercrime distance and temporal proximity
values departing significantly from normal (p < .05), as indicated by Kolmogorov–
Smirnov tests.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Statistical comparisons
Two Friedman’s ANOVAs indicated significant differences
across the six crime pair subsets in terms of intercrime distance,
x2 (5) = 61.77, n = 32, p < .001, and temporal proximity, x2
(5) = 31.96, n = 32, p < .001. The results of post hoc comparisons
(Bonferroni corrected a = 0.008) and effect size calculations are
presented in Table 2. From this table we can see that all three
linked subsets contained shorter intercrime distance and temporal
proximity values than their unlinked counterparts (p < .001 with
large effect sizes [37]), except for the difference in temporal
proximity between linked and unlinked cross-type pairs (p > .05
with a small to medium effect size [37]). When the three linked
subsets were compared with each other, none of these compar-
isons reached the adjusted alpha value (p > .01 with small to
medium effect sizes [37]).
These findings suggest that behavioural case linkage has the
potential to work reliably when compared with chance using the
intercrime distance and the temporal proximity to link across
crime categories, across crime types, and within crime types.
Furthermore, it seems that the level of discrimination accuracy is
comparable across the three levels of analysis. However, it should
be noted that the temporal proximity may not be able to facilitate
significant discrimination accuracy across crime types. These
findings are generally consistent with those reported by Tonkin
et al. [24], which suggests that the basic findings observed with a
sample of solved crimes are replicated in a sample containing both
solved and unsolved crimes.
Temporal proximity
Z = 3.49, n = 47, p < .001*, r = 0.51
Median (days): LCrCat = 199.00; UCrCat = 427.00
Z = 1.66, n = 32, p > .05, r = 0.29
Median (days): LCrTyp = 287.50; UCrTyp = 377.50
Z = 4.76, n = 53, p < .001*, r = 0.65
Median (days): LWi = 119.00; UWi = 522.00
Z = 1.65, n = 32, p > .05, r = 0.29
Median (days): LCrCat = 199.00; LCrTyp = 287.50
Z = 0.42, n = 47, p > .05, r = 0.06
Median (days): LCrCat = 199.00; LWi = 119.00
Z = 1.66, n = 32, p > .05, r = 0.29
Median (days): LCrTyp = 287.50; LWi = 119.00
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150 M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153

Table 3 Table 4
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) results for behavioural case linkage across Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) results reported by Tonkin et al. [24].
crime categories, across crime types and within crime types using the intercrime
distance and temporal proximity. Case linkage AUCa (SE) 95% confidence
feature interval
Case linkage feature AUCa (SE) 95% confidence
Across crime Intercrime distance 0.88 (0.03)*** 0.82–0.95
interval
categories Temporal proximity 0.67 (0.05)** 0.57–0.78
Across crime Intercrime distance 0.86 (0.04) ***
0.78–0.93 Stepwise 0.88 (0.04)*** 0.82–0.95
categories Temporal proximity 0.67 (0.06)** 0.56–0.78
Across crime Intercrime distance 0.90 (0.03)*** 0.84–0.97
Stepwise 0.88 (0.04)*** 0.80–0.95
types Temporal proximity 0.74 (0.05)*** 0.64–0.83
Across crime Intercrime distance 0.79 (0.06) ***
0.67–0.90 Stepwiseb – –
types Temporal proximity 0.53 (0.08) 0.39–0.68
Within crime Intercrime distance 0.91 (0.03)*** 0.84–0.97
Stepwiseb – –
types Temporal proximity 0.74 (0.05)*** 0.64 –0.84
Within crime Intercrime distance 0.77 (0.05)*** 0.68–0.86 Stepwiseb – –
types Temporal proximity 0.77 (0.05)*** 0.68–0.86 a
Area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.50–0.70 are considered low, values of
Stepwise 0.83 (0.04)*** 0.75–0.91
0.70–0.90 are considered moderate, and values of 0.90–1.00 are high [33].
a b
Area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.50–0.70 are considered low, values of A stepwise model was not reported across crime types or within crime types
0.70–0.90 are considered moderate, and values of 0.90–1.00 are high [33]. because the combination of intercrime distance and temporal proximity did not
b
A stepwise model was not reported across crime types because the combination lead to statistically improved discrimination accuracy compared with the single-
of intercrime distance and temporal proximity did not lead to statistically improved feature regression models.
**
discrimination accuracy compared with the single-feature regression models. p < .01.
** ***
p < .01. p < .001.
***
p < .001.

3.2. ROC analyses
To examine discrimination accuracy, eight ROC curves were
produced (see Table 3). A ROC curve was not constructed for the
stepwise regression model across crime types because the
stepwise analysis only included the intercrime distance in the
final model (i.e. the addition of temporal proximity did not
improve discrimination accuracy). Consequently, the AUC value
was identical for the stepwise and intercrime distance models at
this level of analysis.
With the exception of temporal proximity across crime types,
all models were statistically significant. Also, all models achieved
moderate levels of discrimination accuracy, except temporal
proximity across crime types and crime categories [33]. But, the
intercrime distance achieved larger AUC values than temporal
proximity when linking across crime categories and across crime
types. These findings indicate that certain types of offender
behaviour appear to demonstrate the requisite levels of
consistency and distinctiveness to facilitate the linking of crimes
across categories, across types, and within types. Overall, the
basic conclusions from this study are consistent with those
reported by Tonkin et al. [24], but the size of the AUC values
differed in some instances (see Table 4). Most notably, the
intercrime distance achieved a lower level of discrimination
accuracy within crime types in the current study compared with
the findings of Tonkin et al. [24]. Also, the level of accuracy
achieved using the temporal proximity was lower across crime
types in the current study. Both of these differences were
confirmed statistically (p < .05) using ROCKIT 0.9B ß (University
of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States), which has been used to
compare AUC values in previous studies of case linkage
[13,14,16,17]. However, the other estimates of discrimination
accuracy were similar across the two studies (p > .05), although it
should be noted that the lower level of discrimination accuracy in
this study for the intercrime distance across crime types
approached significance (p = .08).
When the analyses were repeated using the split-half method of
cross-validation there were only minor differences in the size of
the AUC values obtained (Mean difference in the AUC = 0.04), with
none of these differences reaching statistical significance (as
indicated by overlapping confidence intervals [19]). This provides
reassurance that the current findings can be reliably compared
with those of Tonkin et al. [24], despite the use of different cross-
validation methods.7
In some instances, previous research with solved crime may,
therefore, have over-estimated the potential for offender behav-
iour to link crimes. This partially validates the concerns expressed
by researchers of case linkage [12,13] and suggests that the degree
of linkage error may be larger than previously thought. However, it
is important to note that – despite the reduction in discrimination
accuracy that was observed in the current study – the majority of
models were statistically significant, which indicates that beha-
vioural case linkage has the potential to be a viable procedure in
practice.
3.3. Practical applications
Given the statistically significant levels of behavioural consis-
tency, distinctiveness, and discrimination accuracy that were
observed in the current study, it is important to discuss how these
findings might be applied in practice. These findings could be used
to develop a statistical tool that would support the linking of crime.
For a given dataset of crimes, this tool would calculate the
intercrime distance (or the temporal proximity if geographical
information were unavailable) for each pairwise combination of
crimes in the dataset (e.g. the geographical distance between crime
1 and crime 2 in the dataset, the distance between crime 1 and
crime 3, and so on). These distances would then be arranged in
order from highest to lowest, thereby providing the investigator
with a prioritised list of potentially linked crimes. This would help
to overcome one of the main challenges faced by investigators at
the early stages of case linkage, which is that they often face a large
volume of crime and it is simply not feasible to conduct individual
analysis for every crime. The linkage tool proposed here would,
therefore, provide the investigator with an evidence-based and
time-efficient method for prioritising the investigation of certain
crimes. This filter-based approach is similar to that suggested by
other researchers [13,38], but importantly these findings indicate
that this approach could be extended beyond series that contain
just one type of crime to series that contain a variety of different
offences. This would allow those prolific and versatile offenders
who are often responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime
to be investigated in a more efficient and successful manner.
However, it is clear from the findings reported in this study
and previous studies that behavioural case linkage which is based
7
The specific ROC figures can be obtained from the first author upon request.
 Author's personal copy
M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153
on such tools will be associated with a degree of error. Indeed, the
AUC values reported in the current study were below the
maximum value of 1.00, which indicates that both false positive
and false negative errors were observed when using the
intercrime distance and temporal proximity to identify linked
and unlinked crime pairs. Investigators should, therefore, be
cautious when applying behavioural case linkage in practice and
should always present their conclusions with appropriate
caveats.
3.4. Theoretical implications
In addition to the practical applications, there are theoretical
insights that can be gleaned from the present study. In particular,
the moderate levels of discrimination accuracy that were achieved
using the intercrime distance indicate that the offenders in this
sample tended to offend in relatively restricted geographical areas
that did not overlap considerably with those of other offenders
[13]. This suggests that the offenders in this sample had somewhat
well-defined offending territories within which they preferred to
offend. These findings extend those observed with specific crime
types, such as residential burglary, commercial robbery, and car
theft [14,17,18] to series comprising a mixture of crime types,
thereby suggesting that the offenders in the present sample tended
to offend in broadly similar geographical regions from one crime to
the next, regardless of what type of crime they were committing.
This supports several seminal models of spatial behaviour that
assume generic psychological processes are involved in the
production of criminal spatial behaviour, irrespective of crime
type [39–41]. In terms of explaining why the offenders preferred to
offend in certain geographical areas, the literature on geographical
profiling is relevant. Specifically, this research has demonstrated
that offenders tend to show a preference for committing crime in
areas that are personally significant (e.g. they live, work, or
socialise in these areas) [42–44]. One might, therefore, predict a
degree of individual difference from one offender to the next in the
areas that are personally significant, which would explain why
somewhat distinct offending territories emerged for the offenders
in this sample.
However, it is a well-known finding within the criminology
literature that certain locations and certain targets appeal to the
majority of offenders when they are choosing places to commit
crime [45,46]. It is, therefore, unsurprising that there was a degree
of overlap in the offending territories of each offender in the
current study (as indicated by AUCs below 1.00). Nevertheless, it is
clear that there was sufficient criminal opportunity for the
offenders to develop statistically distinctive criminal domains.
Another interesting finding from this study was that the AUC
for temporal proximity was larger within crime types than it
was across crime categories/types, whereas the AUC for
intercrime distance remained relatively stable across the three
levels of analysis. Thus, the temporal distance between offences
tended to be smaller when crimes of the same type were
committed compared with crimes from different types and
categories. These findings suggest that the offenders in this
sample may have engaged in periods of short-term specialisa-
tion, whereby they showed a preference for committing one
type of offence over others for a restricted period of time, but
subsequently changed this preference for a different crime type
(due perhaps to ‘‘local life circumstances’’, such as social and
romantic relationships, and employment and living circum-
stances [47,48], but the reason for these potential changes
cannot be determined from these data). If this interpretation is
correct, it would fit with recent criminological theory that
indicates long-term versatility in offending behaviour but also
periods of short-term specialisation [e.g. 47,48].
151
3.5. Limitations and future directions for research
Having considered the implications of the findings, it is
important to consider the limitations of this study. First, the
analysis was restricted to two crimes per offender. While this
decision was necessary to replicate the methodology of Tonkin
et al. [24] and to prevent prolific offenders having an undue
influence on the analyses [1,17,22], researchers have recently
argued that this approach does not replicate real life case linkage
because investigative databases will contain crime series that vary
in length [32]. Consequently, future research should explore the
impact of including all offences in an offender’s series, as this may
provide a more realistic test of behavioural case linkage.
Second, it is important to recognise the potential biases that
arise from using a sample of DNA-linked crimes. This methodology
naturally meant that the sample consisted solely of offenders who
left DNA evidence at the scenes of their crime. Arguably, these
offenders may differ from those that do not leave physical
evidence, which raises doubts about the generalisability of these
findings to the wider offender population. One might argue, for
example, that offenders who leave DNA are more impulsive and
opportunistic and engage in less pre-offence planning than
offenders who do not leave DNA. These are characteristics that
might be associated with spatial and temporal offender behaviour.
Third, the current methodology used scene-to-scene DNA
matches as the basis for determining whether crime pairs were
linked or unlinked. This is in contrast to previous research, which
has used detection status to make these decisions [e.g. 13,15,24].
This is potentially a limitation if the offender’s DNA was found at a
crime scene for some reason other than that s/he committed the
crime. For example, maybe a suspect’s DNA was left at the victim’s
house because s/he is a friend of the victim, rather than the
perpetrator. In a situation such as this, a crime pair classed as
linked in the current study would in fact be unlinked. This would
introduce noise into the analyses. However, the pattern of findings
observed in this study does not suggest that noise has been
systematically introduced as a result of the methodology. If this
were the case, one would expect to see a significant reduction in
discrimination accuracy across all statistical models tested in this
study when compared with Tonkin et al.’s [24] findings. In reality,
the majority of statistical models achieved comparable levels of
discrimination accuracy to those obtained by Tonkin et al. [24].
Fourth, the current study only considered two very simple
measures of offender behaviour. While the simplicity of the
intercrime distance and temporal proximity is actually a strength
(because they would be easy to implement in practice and would
require very few changes to the way in which data are stored by
investigative organisations – unlike other behavioural
approaches), future research must explore whether different types
of offender behaviour can be used to link across crime categories
and crime types. This may, however, require a slightly different
methodology to that utilised in the current study. For example,
researchers might focus on certain types of crime that share
particular behavioural features, such as robbery, rape and murder,
which all contain elements of victim–offender interaction, control
and escape behaviours (e.g. the use of a weapon, methods of victim
restraint, and attempts to conceal one’s identity from the victim).
Indeed, a research study investigating the potential to link across
rapes and robberies using such behaviour is already underway at
the University of Birmingham, UK. This may help to overcome the
obvious difficulty posed by studying a diverse range of crimes that
contain often very different types of offender behaviour. Alterna-
tively, future work might consider developing behavioural themes
from offender crime scene behaviour that would subsequently be
used to examine discrimination accuracy across crime categories/
types. These themes could be developed statistically using
 Author's personal copy
152 M. Tonkin et al. / Forensic Science International 222 (2012) 146–153
techniques such as multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis
[e.g. 20,29,31] or researchers might consider using theoretical
models that are designed to apply to a wide variety of crime types,
such as the Narrative Action System (NAS) model [49,50].
Regardless of the approach used, research such as this is important
because investigators will otherwise have no guidance in
situations where geographical and temporal behaviour is either
unreliable or absent (e.g. where a victim has been drugged or
knocked unconscious and is unable to recall where and when the
offence took place).
Fifth, while the sample size in this study compares favourably
to some previous case linkage research [e.g. 15,16,17], the sample
should still be considered relatively small. The limitations on
sample size arose primarily due to the low recovery rate of DNA at
the scenes of crime (as discussed in the introduction), which
precluded the inclusion of many unsolved crimes in this study. This
demonstrates a limitation of the methodology used in the current
study because, despite sampling data across the whole of
Northamptonshire’s electronic crime records, only 132 offenders
were identified for analysis. Thus, future research with samples of
solved and unsolved crime that have been linked via DNA may
have to consider sampling from larger, more urbanised forces and
combining datasets from several forces to yield datasets that are
large enough to support the necessary analyses.
Sixth, the analyses reported in this study (and, in fact, those
reported in many previous studies of case linkage [e.g. 1,13-24])
have used chance as the benchmark for judging whether a
particular statistical model has the potential to support case
linkage in practice. This allows us to conclude that the statistical
models reported in the current study can achieve discrimination
accuracy that is greater than chance, but it does not allow us to
conclude that these models are better than the methods currently
available to the police (i.e. the discrimination accuracy achieved by
experienced crime analysts). Indeed, crime analysts might be
expected to perform at a level that exceeds chance due to their
experience of crime, criminal behaviour and case linkage. Future
research should, therefore, compare the statistical models reported
in this study with the discrimination accuracy of experienced
crime analysts using mock case linkage tasks [e.g. 51,52]. This will
provide further insight into the potential practical value of these
findings.
4. Conclusions
Previous research has not tested behavioural case linkage in a
way that reflects how it is used in practice, but the use of solved
and unsolved offences in this study provides a more realistic test of
discrimination accuracy. This study, therefore, provides a stronger
evidence base upon which to develop the practice of behavioural
case linkage. Furthermore, these findings provide investigative
organisations with guidance on how they can identify linked crime
series that contain several different types of offence, which has the
potential to contribute significantly to the investigation, detection,
and prosecution of prolific and versatile offenders.
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