Uncovering the structure of criminal organizations by community analysis: the Infinito network

Criminal organizations tend to be clustered to reduce risks of detection and information leaks. Yet, the literature has so far neglected to explore the relevance of subgroups for their internal structure. The paper focuses on a case study drawing from a large law enforcement operation ("Operazione Infinito"). It applies methods of community analysis to explore the structure of a 'Ndrangheta (a mafia from Calabria, a southern Italian region) network representing the individuals' co-participation in meetings. The results show that the network is significantly clustered and that communities are partially associated with the internal organization of the 'Ndrangheta into different locali (similar to mafia families). The implications of these findings on the interpretation of the structure and functioning of the criminal network are discussed.