Devon & Cornwall Police see value of Conversation Analysis at speed

Police investigations face an unprecedented scale of digital data. Over 90% of reported crime has a digital footprint. A single arrest can result in up to 17 digital devices seized, each potentially holding millions of messages across thousands of conversations, and other material, with typical manual review taking up to 1,400 officer hours per device.

Detective Inspector Simon Foster and the POLIT team in Devon and Cornwall Police used Safeguard to analyse such conversations. In one case, Safeguard identified five high-risk chat threads containing indicators of child sexual exploitation grooming within 88,000 chat messages in under 20 minutes. The estimated saving for this case alone was 36 hours.

D.I. Foster said that POLIT teams are seeing significant increases in caseloads, with over 200 suspects currently under investigation and over 100 intelligence referrals received each month.

Around 50 active cases have very large volumes of text needing analysis – with a potential saving of over 1,800 investigator hours.

NPCC colleagues described the results as very encouraging, highlighting capability uplift and operational value on money saved, while emphasising the importance of OPSCA and NPCC in enabling science, innovation, and meaningful partnership working.

The collaboration built on earlier work between Securium and Merseyside Police in detecting Rape and Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO), involving the Police Digital Service (PDS) and the Home Office Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE). Merseyside investigators compared manual review with behavioural analysis, validating what could be done for the victim experience: “I did not identify a single victim in my 2 hours. Securium identified 46 potential victims in 5 minutes.” (D.I. from Merseyside Police).

Dr Anna Vartapetiance, CEO of Securium, said: “We are incredibly grateful to Simon and the Devon & Cornwall team for their dedication and partnership. Investigators deal with unprecedented volumes of digital data within which important signs of harms and crimes can easily remain hidden. We are happy that our software has helped investigators to find such signs quickly, allowing for focus of their expertise where it matters – in protecting victims and progressing prosecutions.”.

To find out more about the capabilities of Safeguard, and how it might help your organisation, see our overview of Safeguard or use the form below to Request A Demo.