FORECASTING THE NUMBER OF CORRUPTION CRIMES IN KAZAKHSTAN: A MACHINE LEARNING APPROACH

This study aims to predict the number of corruption crimes in Kazakhstan using machine learning methods. The research is based on official monthly crime statistics collected from the Legal Statistics Portal, specifically the Report Form No. 3-K, which records corruption-related offenses since 2016 [3]. Three regression models were applied: k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Linear Regression. Model performance was assessed using Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and R-squared (R²) score. The findings indicate that Linear Regression achieved the highest predictive accuracy (R² = 1.000), followed by XGBoost (R² = 0.9977) and kNN (R² = 0.9333). These results suggest that machine learning models can effectively forecast corruption crime trends. This study highlights the potential of machine learning in corruption crime prediction. Future research can explore additional predictive features, alternative machine learning models, and real-time data integration to enhance forecasting accuracy.