Offender Profiling Series: Vol 3
The Social Psychology of Crime










back to The Social Psychology of Crime

The Social Psychology of Crime: Groups, Teams and Networks

Duncan McAndrew
The Structural Analysis of Criminal Networks

Crime is a social activity. This includes co-offending, where groups of offenders carry out specific criminal activities together, and the social interactions between criminals, through familial ties, friendship and shared locations, such as prisons. Identifying such relationships has been a major concern for police officers and crime analysts investigating areas ranging from highly organised enterprises, e.g. Triads, through to individual incidents such as armed robberies. Several methods have been used to aid such investigations by creating visual representations of relationships and connections. These representations are sociograms, one of a variety of measures used in a methodological approach called Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA is used as part of a field in the social sciences termed Structural Analysis, which explicitly measures details of the structures of networks. A wide variety of research has been carried out that implicitly studies structure. Work on organised crime discusses concepts such as hierarchy and individual position. Descriptions of drug trafficking include differentiation of roles within the networks and how commodities are moved between different stages of the operations. There has been little research using SNA on criminal networks, in such areas as white-collar crime, juvenile delinquency and organised crime. A number of SNA measures have the potential to aid investigators - measures that identify how central individuals are and what subgroups are present, for example. These techniques need to be systematically tested to determine which ones will be of the most benefit in the analysis of criminal intelligence, with the aim of aiding in the development of operational and strategic action plans. A case study illustrates the application of SNA to a criminal network.

Duncan McAndrew has completed his PhD on the structure of criminal networks at the University of Liverpool. He completed a BSc (Hons) in Psychology/Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University in Canada before coming to the UK to complete the MSc in Investigative Psychology. His Masters dissertation was a study of serial murderer crime scene behaviour patterns. Current research interests include methods of intelligence gathering and analysis, crime analysis, proactive policing strategies, social network analysis and researching the organised sexual abuse of children. He is continuing his research at the University of Liverpool for a year, before returning to Canada to pursue a career in work related to his research interests.

buy it now from


back to books