Citation

Bennell C, Jones NJ, Melnyk T. Leg. Crim. Psychol. 2009; 14(2): 293-310.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, British Psychological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1348/135532508X349336

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Purpose. Through an examination of serial rape data, the current article presents arguments supporting the use of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis over traditional methods in addressing challenges that arise when attempting to link serial crimes. Primarily, these arguments centre on the fact that traditional linking methods do not take into account how linking accuracy will vary as a function of the threshold used for determining when two crimes are similar enough to be considered linked.