Dismantling Criminal Networks

Abstract

Internationally, there is recognition of the need to more clearly understand drug markets and the criminal syndicates that operate within them, in order to target drug law enforcement interventions in the most effective ways. The current project aims to fill some of the gaps in knowledge about the structure of drug trafficking networks using SNA, and to evaluate the impact of different types of law enforcement interventions directed at drug trafficking networks. We build on earlier work in which judges‘ sentencing comments were used to build a network map of a drug trafficking syndicate which operated in Australia in the 1990s. As well as producing a network map, this study was also able to identify the role that each individual played within the syndicate. We wish to explore the effectiveness of different hypothetical intervention strategies that aim to dismantle the network. First we investigate the structure of the network and show that it shares some properties of scale-free networks. Then four enforcement