AI helps police identify new lines of inquiry in environmental crime investigations

Al Capone pilot completed: investigators uncover legal avenues they had not previously considered

Delft / Utrecht, 26 August – The pilot phase of Al Capone, an AI prototype designed to support the Dutch National Police in investigating environmental crime, has been completed. KickstartAI and the Dutch National Police announced the results today. The pilot shows that the tool can help investigators broaden their search and uncover potential legal avenues they might otherwise have overlooked.

A small group of environmental crime investigators tested Al Capone using real cases as part of a pilot. Environmental crimes can be anything from hazardous waste (that is illegally exported) to deforestation (for instance due to biomass fraud). It’s a wide and extremely complex area of investigation, each case may involve entirely different law books that are relevant, which makes it impossible for investigators to know every legal avenue that is available.

The tool uses an anonymised case file to search legislation and case law from different legal perspectives. The investigators reviewed hundreds of search results suggested by the AI tool, ranging from potentially relevant laws and court rulings to possible legal avenues. Nearly two-thirds of the suggestions were considered relevant for the investigation. More strikingly, investigators identified between two and nine new investigative directions that they had not previously considered. In some cases, they had already been working on the investigation for more than a year.

The results suggest that Al Capone does not tell investigators what to do, but can help them discover new avenues to explore early in an investigation, which can prevent tunnel vision and therefore even help gather more evidence.

Looking beyond the obvious

Al Capone was developed by KickstartAI in collaboration with the Dutch National Police. The prototype is designed for the early stages of complex environmental crime investigations, such as cases involving illegal trade in tropical timber, waste shipments, hazardous substances, or  fraud cases related to such crimes. Such investigations are often complicated because they can span several areas of law at once, including environmental law, criminal law, European regulations, permits, subsidies and financial structures. As a result, a relevant lead may lie outside the first and most obvious line of inquiry.

The mob boss

Al Capone does not only look at direct references in a case or the most obvious environmental legislation. It also explores broader and less conventional legal avenues. Investigators upload an anonymised case document, which the AI turns into a structured summary. It then explores the case from several legal angles and searches across multiple legal databases for relevant laws, court rulings and other potential leads. The results are ranked and presented to investigators, who decide what is relevant to pursue.

This is why the prototype is named after violent mob boss Al Capone, who was ultimately convicted not for the crimes for which he was notorious, but for tax evasion. The idea behind the tool is similar: sometimes the most promising legal route is not the one you would initially expect.

The prototype will be further refined in the coming period, with a focus on improving the technology, the user interface and the way results are ranked and explained. Based on the pilot results, KickstartAI and the Dutch National Police will determine how Al Capone can be developed towards a first operational version for further use.

Amir Nikham, Dutch National Police: “In complex environmental crime cases, finding the right angle can be a challenge. Investigators are dealing with large amounts of information, different sets of rules and sometimes structures that are not immediately visible. What is particularly interesting about this pilot is that investigators found new directions they had not considered before, even in cases they had already been working on for a long time. This is not a typical AI tool that tries to generate answers or replace human work; it is an augmentation that helps us look more broadly and bring potential leads into view earlier.”

Erick Webbe, CEO of KickstartAI: “The value of Al Capone is not in providing ready-made answers, but in opening up new lines of thinking. In environmental crime cases, a single document can point towards several different legal avenues. AI can help make those avenues visible more quickly, allowing police professionals to assess what is relevant to their investigation. That is exactly what applied AI is about: not building a clever tool for the sake of it, but creating technology that supports professionals in their day-to-day work and strengthens their expertise.”