Applying an abductive mixed‐methods approach, we investigate the informal status systems in three women's prison units (across two prisons) and one men's prison unit. Qualitative analyses suggest “old head” narratives—where age, time in prison, sociability, and prison wisdom confer unit status—are prevalent across all four contexts. Perceptions of maternal “caregivers” and manipulative “bullies,” however, are...

Prison-based therapeutic communities (TCs) are a widespread, effective way to help incarcerated individuals address substance abuse problems. The TC philosophy is grounded in an explicitly relational paradigm that entails building community and conditioning residents to increasingly take responsibility for leadership therein. Although TCs are based on cultivating a network that continuously integrates new residents, many...

In a sample of 480 university students, we examined associations between self-ratings of psychopathic traits, made using the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP; Cooke et al. 2012), the Psychopathic Personality Inventory: Short Form (PPI: SF; Lilienfeld and Hess 2001), and self-ratings of the structure of their core social networks (i.e., best friends, intimates). Results...

Objectives Concerns about the value of features of psychopathy to explanations of offending may be driven by challenges with testing this relationship as opposed to the construct’s limited predictive validity. The current study introduced psychopathology network modeling as an analytic strategy capable of addressing these challenges through a more nuanced description of the structural and...

A central aim of research on psychopathic personality disturbance (PPD) involves identifying core features of the construct. Such aims have been addressed primarily through prototypicality studies and research using item-response theory. More recently, the logic of social network analysis was extended to psychopathology research to examine which symptoms are most central to PPD networks. Such...

What leads a minority of criminal groups to persist over time? Although most criminal groups are characterized by short life spans, a subset manages to survive extended periods. Contemporary research on criminal groups has been primarily descriptive and static, leaving important questions on the correlates of group persistence unanswered. By drawing from competing perspectives on...

Within criminology, life course theory and research have linked positive role transitions (e.g., marriage, parenthood, and employment) with criminal desistance over time. Simultaneously, studies suggest that high-risk offenders are unlikely to enter or remain committed to such transitions, challenging interventions based on life course principles. Prison-based therapeutic communities (TCs) offer a potential exception to this...

Increases in studies on the network dynamics of crime groups and co-offending has led many scholars to reflect on potential measurement biases arising from a reliance on official data sources. A problem of official data is that it forces boundaries on criminal groups that are much more fluid and dynamic than they seem. Drawing from...

This paper examines a pre-planned fraud which ran undetected for more than five years and deceived 2285 investors for $240 million. We seek to uncover the effects of trust in social ties and conducting due diligence on 1) an investor’s initial amount of investment and 2) their overall loss of capital. Using data from a...

This article discusses how the development of network analysis techniques has affected research on crime and the practice of crime control over the past two decades. It describes the contributions of network analysis to criminological research – the new questions that network analysis techniques allowed criminologists to address, the old questions that have been addressed...

Research on inmate social order, a once-vibrant area, receded just as U.S. incarceration rates climbed and the country’s carceral contexts dramatically changed. This study returns to inmate society with an abductive mixed-methods investigation of informal status within a contemporary men’s prison unit. We collected narrative and social network data from 133 male inmates housed in...

While prior research has shown that the probability of detection plays a role in the decision-making of many offenders, much less is known on offenders’ relative success in avoiding arrest. In this study, we draw from detailed criminal career data on 172 offenders involved in lucrative criminal activities to examine the role of criminal competence...

A group’s resilience is often linked to its network structure. While decentralized network properties have been associated with resilience at the group-level, little is known about the individual-level factors that lead groups to adopt these structures. Criminal groups, consistently faced with unexpected external disruptions, provide an opportunity to examine individual decisions to collaborate across periods...

The current study investigates informal social structure among prison inmates. Data come from the Prison Inmate Network Study (PINS), a project focused on a unit of a Pennsylvania medium security men’s prison. We focus on 205 inmates and their “get along with” network – an approximation of friendship in other settings. We find a weak...

Criminal and terrorist organizations often depend on repeat offenders to maintain the group’s longevity, especially after repeated law enforcement interventions. Yet, little is known about the offenders who perpetrate multiple incidents on behalf of a group. Relying on data for 118 terrorist offenders involved across eight attacks from 2000 to 2005, this study examines the...

Ponzi schemes are a type of social network where investors are recruited by a variety of social actors. This study uses network analysis to investigate whether the type of social tie that influenced victims of the Eron Ponzi scheme to invest is associated with the different harms victims experienced from their involvement in the fraud....

The mid-twentieth century witnessed a surge of American prison ethnographies focused on inmate society and the social structures that guide inmate life. Ironically, this literature virtually froze in the 1980s just as the country entered a period of unprecedented prison expansion, and has only recently begun to thaw. In this manuscript, we develop a rationale...

Omar Hammami was a self-described “American Jihadi” who published his autobiography on the Internet in early 2012. Not long after, he was to disappear completely from the public eye, leading to speculations on his possible death. In this chapter, we draw from a social network perspective to illustrate Hammami’s journey to jihad, using his autobiography...

This study argues that integrating network concepts and network methods to the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism are central ingredients in bringing the field forward from theoretical, empirical and policy perspectives. This is not exactly a new idea, although the move to study terrorist networks did not really take off until the events of 9/11....

While recruitment is central to the viability of all groups, the process itself is not necessarily consistent across groups. The purpose of this study is to examine the manner in which and the extent to which terrorist and extremist groups use the Internet for the purpose of recruitment. Based on the two dimensions of intensity...