  Complex networks are nowadays employed in several applications. Modeling
urban street networks is one of them, and in particular to analyze criminal
aspects of a city. Several research groups have focused on such application,
but until now, there is a lack of a well-defined methodology for employing
complex networks in a whole crime analysis process, i.e. from data preparation
to a deep analysis of criminal communities. Furthermore, the "toolset"
available for those works is not complete enough, also lacking techniques to
maintain up-to-date, complete crime datasets and proper assessment measures. In
this sense, we propose a threefold methodology for employing complex networks
in the detection of highly criminal areas within a city. Our methodology
comprises three tasks: (i) Mapping of Urban Crimes; (ii) Criminal Community
Identification; and (iii) Crime Analysis. Moreover, it provides a proper set of
assessment measures for analyzing intrinsic criminality of communities,
especially when considering different crime types. We show our methodology by
applying it to a real crime dataset from the city of San Francisco - CA, USA.
The results confirm its effectiveness to identify and analyze high criminality
areas within a city. Hence, our contributions provide a basis for further
developments on complex networks applied to crime analysis.
