Crime organizations are resilient

Organized crime forms a great threat to societies across the globe. International criminal drugs organizations try to infiltrate legal businesses and governments, infecting economic branches with corruption and violence. Moreover upcoming threats like cybercrime, child porn, maritime piracy, match fixing and identity theft cause substantial harm and ask for proactive interventions to control the criminal organizations behind them1,2. Government and law enforcement agencies worldwide seek ways to disrupt these criminal organizations effectively, preferably at an early stage. Over the past decade a growing number of studies emerged that provide empirical evidence of the use of social network analyses to get a better understanding of organized crime. These studies show that criminal organizations need to be considered as social networks that form collectives rather than organizations with unique features, such as flexible and non-hierarchical internal relations2,3,4,5,6,7,8. This approach has serious implications for the way we think about law enforcement control of organized crime. It has long been assumed that targeting the ‘kingpin’ leader at the top of the pyramid structured mafia organization, would result in the collapse of the entire criminal organization4,9,10. However, new insights from social network analyses emphasize that the fluidity and flexibility of the social structure of criminal networks makes them highly resilient against these traditional law enforcement strategies7,10. For instance, it was found that even though a drug trafficking network was structurally targeted over a substantial period of time, the trafficking activities continued and its network structure adapted11. Research concerning the resilience of criminal networks involved in the production of ecstasy in the Netherlands lead to the same conclusions10. How can this be explained? The complexity of criminal networks An answer to this question can be found within the specific features of the associated ‘dark’ network structures and, more importantly, the conditions under which these exist9,12. Criminal network structures are known to be very complex systems. As Morselli describes it “Criminal networks are not simply social networks operating in criminal contexts. The covert settings that surround them call for specific interactions and relational features within and beyond the network”7. Criminal networks therefore differ from legal networks in that they face a constant trade-off between security and efficiency which directly affects its network structure13. On the one hand illegal activities need to stay concealed from the government or criminal competition. This means that direct communication between co-conspirators concerning illegal activities needs to be restricted to a minimum. On the other hand risks have to be taken in times of action, often demanding highly efficient communication and trust among the participants12,14. Criminal networks therefore continuously balance between efficiency and security according to the given circumstances of the illegal activities. This trade-off has a direct effect on its network structure as revealed by a study from Baker and Faulkner15. They found that within a covert network, involved in a price-fixing scheme, the most important actors deliberately operated from the peripheries of the network, thus protecting these essential players from immediate detection after government intervention. In addition, Morselli et al. found that the balance between efficiency and security within covert networks was influenced by its network objective. They compared the structure of a criminal network with terrorist networks and showed that criminal networks need more efficiency in their direct lines of communication as compared to terrorist networks. Consequently this made them less secure and more vulnerable to disruption14. This can be explained by the fact that economically driven criminal networks need shorter time frames between action (time-to-task) as opposed to ideologically driven terrorist networks. Terrorist networks might achieve their goals by just one successful terrorist attack. Criminal networks are often action oriented, resulting in higher levels of risk of becoming detected. In response, criminal networks try to remain flexible and agile. This flexibility gives them the ability to adapt quickly to external shocks9,16. Although these studies help us to understand that remaining flexible is the key to criminal network resilience against disruption, little is known about how these flexible network structures actually recover from an attack and continue their illegal activities. In other words: What actually makes these flexible criminal network structures so difficult to disrupt? In search for an answer, we first need to understand that like every social network, criminal networks are not static, but dynamic in nature3,7. Criminal networks can change for several reasons: as a result of new business opportunities, as a consequence of competition that requires a defensive orientation or as a direct result of law enforcement controls that may lead to the downfall, stagnation or adaptation of the network7. The changing effects of network disruption can therefore only be understood within its dynamics, these networks are truly complex adaptive systems17. Many researchers of criminal networks agree that “studying … the dynamics in criminal networks is probably the most challenging obstacle facing anyone approaching this area.”3,7 Although we recognize the complexity and difficulty that is associated with studying change within social networks, we attempt to capture these dynamics within a computational framework.