Bureau of Sabotage
The shaping of covert social networks: Isolating the effects of secrecy
Contemporary understandings of organized crime networks based on routine activities theory see strong parallels between criminal organizations and legitimate business organizations. This article focuses on the limitations of understanding covert networks solely on their own terms and seeks to re-assess the role of covertness in criminal organizations. The article profiles the principal models of organized crime and differentiates models concerned with ‘organization for activities’ from models concerned with ‘organization for social relations’. It then considers the role of covertness in the core business of organized crime and the implications this has for law enforcement. Empirical evidence about covert networks is scarce, conceptualisations of the effects of covertness on how networks form and are organised are contradictory, and systematic comparative analysis of covert and overt networks is lacking.