important relationships in criminal networks

[_rck_]

This is based on a Canadian report about criminal networks. The report itself focuses more on organized crime as social relationships rather than as business relationships (a not insignificant part).

The key social relationships within organized crime are all based on something that is already in common between the members, and somewhat out of their control (these might of course overlap):

• shared genetic pool (i.e., "blood relationships")
• shared generational background or cultural references
• shared ethnicity or geographical origin
• shared membership in associations

Equally interesting are the four ways of assessing the centrality of a member in a social network (the first three due to Freeman, the last one due to Sparrow):

1. degree centrality ranks the total number of connections of each entity
2. closeness centrality sums the geodesic (shortest) paths through the network to all other members
3. betweeness centrality measures how often an individual mediates between others
4. articulation centrality measures the degree of disruption of a network due to the removal of a member

The authors also note that network redundancy is very important for criminal networks, due to the on-going and actively pursued removal of connections by law enforcement or inter-network violence.

The paper then continues to identify seven roles that people can play in a criminal network, to wit:

1. Organizers who decide the direction of the range of activities the networked members are involved in
2. Insulators which protect the core from the periphery against compromise and penetration, mainly by serving as command conduits
3. Communicators, who not only pass on commands, but also relay back feedback. They might clash with the insulators, leading to sometimes the same person playing both roles.
4. Guardians enforce network security, supervise loyalty and limit defections or their effects.
5. Extenders handle recruitment and the establishment of communication with other entities, e.g. other networks, governments and businesses, etc.
6. Monitors supervise the network's overall effectiveness and capability for reorganization and report back to the organizers with problems or suggestions.
7. Cross-overs have roles in the legal world and feed information from thence into the network.

The authors note that the majority of the network security is expended on protecting the core, which is using the difficult-to-influence shared properties of its relationship-ties to undermine infiltration attempts. The periphery is a defense mechanism that can be ditched if undermined or cut off, and the fluidity of the connection system ensures that parts can be abandoned without losing the whole.