Principles of incendiary crime analysis

Arson is the malicious and willful burning of property, sometimes for fraudulent purposes. On a per offense basis, it is the costliest and fastest rising crime in the United States with yearly property losses exceeding $2.5 billion and deaths amounting to 1000. Reasons given for the nationally accelerating rate of arson include a present lack of uniform law enforcement strategies, low criminal prosecution success rates, and the general multifaceted nature of the offense.

Strategies for incendiary crime abatement programs are explored including a comprehensive analysis of the offense. This analysis forms a model for arson-fraud crimes which can be delineated into detection, prediction, and prevention phases. Computer-assisted techniques aid in this analysis and are documented using actual case data with the Arson Pattern Recognition System (APRS).