ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on efforts to disrupt organised crime, including organised criminal activities and organised criminal groups, with a particular emphasis on social network analysis (SNA). We expand on the origins of disruption as a concept and strategy and the approaches to disruption under three broad categories: surveillance and intelligence, active engagement, and arrest and seizure. The chapter then applies a network perspective to disruption, including how SNA can be used by law enforcement to disrupt organised criminal groups. First, we demonstrate how SNA can be used to identify key actors in criminal groups based on their network position (social capital), their specific attributes (human capital), and a combination of the two (network capital). Second, we consider the different impacts network approaches have on organised criminal groups. Third, we turn to some innovative ways that law enforcement could use SNA across a broad range of interventions.
