Networks and Network Analysis for Defence and Security: Identifying Mafia Bosses from Meeting Attendance

Abstract

Law enforcement agencies have frequently shown skepticism toward the results of the application of social network analysis to organized crime. Indeed, most studies to date have analyzed data (e.g. telephone intercepts) whose content was already well-known to the practitioners. Shifting the focus to data on mafia meetings, this chapter explores whether network analysis can identify the bosses in a large mafia network. The analysis relies on data from a large-scale investigation on the presence of the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia from the Southern Italian region of Calabria. Operation Infinito identified several mafia families and tracked a number of mafia meetings. The results show that betweenness centrality is the most sig- nificant predictor of leadership in the mafia. A logistic regression model, using network measures as predictors, is able successfully to predict the position (boss or other) of 92 % of the individuals in the network. If supported by further studies, network analysis of meetings may provide law enforcement agencies with infor- mation useful for identifying the bosses of criminal organizations.