Tackling trans-European crime

Organised crime and modern-day threats such as human trafficking pose a major threat to the security, safety and economy of the EU. Researchers have developed innovative tools to enable law enforcement bodies to better cope with the growing complexity of serious crime.

Climate Change and Environment

Collecting statistics and facilitating exchanges of information are key actions for combating crime and human trafficking. Crime-fighting EU agencies are ill equipped to process and integrate vast amounts of information in a coherent, reliable database. The EU-funded 'Strategic crime and immigration information management system' (SCIIMS)(opens in new window) project employed current state-of-the-art products, and created and integrated novel capabilities to facilitate the exchange of processed information. Team members carried out research and designed particular applications and algorithms to recognise, arrange and represent information concerning criminal and human trafficking activities. The technology will mine large data sets from public and private sources to generate valuable intelligence for law enforcement actors. This could include data stored in the Schengen Information System — the biggest such system for public safety in Europe — the European Police Office and the EU's law enforcement agency, as well as national police and immigration databases in Member States. These web crawling and data mining tools are crucial to improving secure information management and exploitation practices. Researchers developed a secure information infrastructure enabling data to be combined and shared within and outside of Europe. This is done in accordance with the information and fundamental human rights requirements of EU law enforcement and immigration agencies. The system will support decision making to predict events and investigate possible outcomes relevant to the security of citizens. Before SCIIMS, most systems focused on data searches. Now, law enforcement officers are able to choose data and organise it in a rational way to reinforce an ongoing criminal investigation. As the project's global police intelligence system improves human trafficking and smuggling investigations, the incidence of such crimes is expected to drop. SCIIMS will help to realise a safer Europe for the benefit of all citizens.