This study took a critical insight into the behavioral characterization of an organized crime network in southeast Nigeria due to the high wave of insecurity of lives and properties in the region. The researchers identified some existing organized crime groups in the region to include herdsmen, unknown gunmen, confraternities, area boys, drug and human traffickers. A review of current occurrences in the region from a theoretical perspective revealed that the ideological activities of a particular organized crime group (the unknown gunmen), which has overwhelmed the security apparatus due to its shroudedness in secrecy and other forms of behavioral characterization, have become highly prevalent. Further review revealed that little light has so far been shone on the mapping of organized crime behavioral characterizations, which when properly modeled using computational-based mathematics, can help predict their activities. Based on this gap in literature, the researchers critically reviewed six (6) unique behavioral characterizations of an organized crime network. The review revealed amongst others that resilience enabled the group resist external pressures from law enforcement agencies while well-structuredness gave them the abilities to creating adequate communication networks. Informed by these expositions, the researchers concluded that in- depth knowledge of these behavioral characterizations of an organized crime network will not only fuel sound computational-based backgrounds in the area of mathematics of crime (MoC) and computational criminology but also yield intelligent counterterrorism approaches, which will aid the required paradigm shift from the existing non-technological methods of tackling crime (Sense – Response) to the technological methods of Predict - Prevent. Guided by these, the researchers made numerous recommendations amongst which is for security personnel to focus intelligence gathering on the behavioral characterizations of already existing organized crime networks in the region, in order to effectively map and predict their future lines of action.

Keywords : Organized Crime Network, Unknown Gunmen, Behavioral Characterization, Mathematics of Crime, Computational Criminology.