Exploring the structural characteristics of social networks in a large criminal court database

Social network analysis refers to the study of structural aspects in networks to understand and interpret social entities and related patterns. This form of research has proven to be very useful in the study of illicit networks. To date, however, large criminal court datasets that include a comprehensive scope of cases have yet to be explored. The current work begins to explore this potential by applying social network analysis methods to CourBC-an extensive multi-year database of adult criminal court records in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. Through a variety of network analysis methods, the authors explore the topology and structure of the database. Results demonstrate that the structure of the dataset is similar to that of other large criminal justice datasets yet there are some notable differences. The potential for this type of data in illicit network research and some specific areas for continued research in the field are discussed.