RAND_MR1382

policymakers concerned with developing strategies to combat criminal networks.
BACKGROUND ON NETWORK ANALYSIS
Networks are one of the most common forms of social organization. They are
simultaneously pervasive and intangible, ubiquitous and invisible, everywhere and
nowhere. Networks are not an exclusive organizational form and often exist within
more traditional hierarchical structures, cutting through divisions based on
specialization or rank. It is also possible to have networks in which hierarchical
organizations are key participants. Networks are also an important complement to
markets, making them more efficient, reducing transaction costs, and providing
increased opportunities for both buyers and sellers.
These characteristics—their pervasiveness, their capacity to coexist both within and
outside hierarchies, their ability to make markets more efficient by facilitating directed
flows of information and commodities—give networks an elusive quality. In some
respects, they appear little more than plastic organizations that can be molded in many
different ways.
Networks vary in size, shape, membership, cohesion, and purpose. Networks can be
large or small, local or global, domestic or transnational, cohesive or diffuse, centrally
directed or highly decentralized, purposeful or directionless. A specific network can be
narrowly and tightly focused on one goal or broadly oriented toward many goals, and it
can be either exclusive or encompassing in its membership.
Networks facilitate flows of information, knowledge, and communication as well as
more-tangible commodities. As communications have become cheaper and easier,
networks have expanded enormously. Indeed, technological networks facilitate the
operation of larger and more-dispersed social networks and can even act as a critical
force multiplier for certain kinds of social networks. Against this background, the
analysis here seeks to:
• Delineate very briefly the underlying concepts and ideas that encourage and facilitate
analysis of criminal organizations in terms of network structures. These include social
network analysis, a growing literature on network business organizations (a concept
developed most fully in the idea of the virtual corporation), and previous studies of
organized crime that have emphasized the importance of networks rather than the
more traditional hierarchical structures.
• Identify the characteristics of networks that make them attractive to criminals and to
elucidate further the major characteristics of criminal networks.
• Specify critical roles in criminal networks, bearing in mind that there are network
roles that relate to the functioning of the network and substantive roles related