ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief primer about social network analysis (SNA), to familiarize the reader with key concepts and basic terminology. It summarizes what the network-oriented research has discovered about gang violence, co-offending, and the structure of crime groups. The chapter describes emerging research areas and analytic developments that may be useful for crime prevention and disruption. A social network is simply a set of actors and the relations among them. ‘Actors are a general term that can refer to individuals, groups, organizations, websites, nation-states, or any social unit of interest. SNA is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring the regularities and patterns of social relations and their effects on behavior, perceptions, beliefs, and decisions. Theoretically, SNA principles are congruent with major principles and practices in environmental criminology and crime analysis. Most SNA metrics and analytic procedures examine social interactions using dyads or triads as the base unit.
