Key Crime

KeyCrime Srl, established in Milan, Italy, in 2018, represented a targeted effort to integrate data analytics and artificial intelligence into law enforcement practices. The firm was founded by Mario Venturi, a former Italian State Police officer with 31 years of experience, who brought a deep, practice-based understanding of criminal investigation to the venture. Venturi's career, specializing in identifying patterns in serial crimes like robberies, directly informed the company's core mission. He initiated the development of systematic data collection and standardized victim interviews, which became the foundation of KeyCrime's approach.

The company's flagship product was 'delia', a predictive policing software platform designed to support law enforcement agencies. This tool was engineered to analyze crime data, link seemingly disparate events through common features, and ultimately predict the likely time and location of future offenses in a series. Delia utilized artificial intelligence and machine learning to process over 1.5 million variables per crime, highlighting correlated evidence and criminal behaviors to identify patterns that might escape human analysis. The platform's intended clients were police departments, government firms, and other law enforcement bodies, offering them a data-driven tool for decision support, resource optimization, and targeted crime prevention strategies.

KeyCrime's business model appeared to be business-to-business, likely operating on a subscription basis for its software. The company secured approximately €1.2 million in a conventional debt round on June 19, 2018, with investors including Oltre Impact, Sdg Group, and entrepreneur Giorgio Gandini. Despite a promising start and a long-running experimental deployment with the Italian State Police in Milan, the company faced significant headwinds. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic reportedly disrupted the company's sales rollout. Ultimately, the firm ceased operations and is now in liquidation, a failure that CEO Mario Venturi partly attributed to the stringent requirements of the European Union's AI Act, which created a challenging operational environment for predictive policing technologies. Keywords: predictive policing, law enforcement technology, crime analytics, serial crime analysis, AI in policing, Mario Venturi, delia software, criminal investigation software, police data analytics, public safety technology, behavioral analysis, crime pattern recognition, justice technology, Oltre Impact, Milan startup, forensic data analysis, investigative support, criminal intelligence, law enforcement software, justice system innovation