Over the past three decades, the application of data analytics technologies to security and criminal investigations has evolved significantly, shaping the field now recognized as criminal analytics. In the context of Ghana’s growing digital ecosystem and emerging security threats, this paper examines how advanced analytical tools such as link analysis, intelligent agents, text mining, neural networks, and machine learning can be applied to enhance crime detection and prevention efforts. We analyze the latest developments in big data analytics and assess their relevance for law enforcement agencies and intelligence operations in Ghana. The review focuses on recent literature and highlights how big data technologies can support criminal investigations through social network analysis, particularly structural and positional analysis, which form the foundation of criminal intelligence gathering. Additionally, we introduce a novel methodological approach tailored for Ghana, leveraging big data analytics to support proactive and data-driven policing. The paper also discusses key challenges, including data privacy, technical capacity, and infrastructure limitations, and proposes future directions for integrating big data into Ghana’s criminal justice and national security frameworks.