Can Social Network Analysis Be Used to Study Crime?

The use of social network analysis to study groups of offenders engaged in illicit activities such as drug trafficking and terrorism has grown in popularity over the last three decades. Along with such growth, however, researchers have been confronted with a suite of challenges related to the use of data extracted from criminal justice records. IA new study in the journal Social Networks reviews these challenges through a discussion of the extant empirical literature utilizing social network analysis approaches that draw data from the criminal justice system. First, the authors outline and discuss the different types of data used across this literature. Second, the authors chronicle the challenges that have emerged across the field of criminal networks via a comprehensive review of the literature. In particular, the authors draw on the documented experiences of researchers in the field, including our own, and detail “archeological” approaches that future researchers can utilize to adapt and overcome said challenges. The use of criminal justice records can suffer from a number of limitations, mainly with respect to accuracy, validity and reliability. Such data may include errors, both intentional (e.g. aliases, false information) and unintentional (e.g. transcription errors), including missing data. The use of criminal justice records present particular problems with defining the network boundary as the boundary as determined by law enforcement or prosecution agencies may not correspond to the boundary as defined by network members. The authors conclude by offering a number of recommendations for researchers about data collection and preparation when utilizing criminal justice records. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

 

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