Carrington (2011) ‘Crime and Social Network Analysis.’
Citation: Carrington, Peter J. (2011) ‘Crime and Social Network Analysis,’ in Peter J. Carrington and John Scott (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, London: SAGE, pp. 236-255.
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Carrington (2011:236): In criminology, differential association theory holds that individuals’ attitudes towards crime can be understood through the normative values of the groups to which they belong: where they engage in delinquency, it is because they belong to family and peer networks with more favourable attitudes towards criminal behaviour. The theory has, however, been challenged on the grounds that it is hard to reliably measure pro- and anti-criminal behaviour attitudes (particularly when relying on self-reporting, which runs the risk of respondents projecting their own behaviours and attitudes onto others in their network). More sophisticated efforts at analysing the phenomenon have focused not on the number of delinquent ties, but on the proportion of delinquent ties as the critical variable. Social disorganisation theory comes to a similar conclusion, but focuses on the level of the group and the influence of community attitudes to crime. However, overall finds that the use of SNA in criminology is still in its infancy.