Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Networks and Organized Crime

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1302778 Donald Tomaskovic-Devey Chris Smith University of Massachusetts Amherst This dissertation improvement research continues to build a unique relational database on early 1900s Chicago organized crime. To date, over 4,000 pages of archival documents and secondary sources have been coded for information on more than 2,800 individuals and their nearly 14,000 social ties. This dissertation asks: How did relationships between men and women contribute to the structures, activities, and dynamics of organized crime groups in early 1900s Chicago? Social network methods focus this research agenda on three substantive and testable questions: (1) What were women's roles in organized crime networks? (2) Were women structurally important to organized crime networks? (3) Were there locations of equality for men and women in illicit networks? Answers to these questions have the potential to change theory by adding gender and family to social network scholarship and revealing locations of gender equality in illicit organizations during a historical moment when formal organizations were severely gender segregated. This project uses a network analysis approach to examine women?s roles and positions in organized crime before, during, and after Prohibition in Chicago. Social network analysis offers theoretical and methodological tools to investigate organized crime groups as enmeshed systems of relationships between high profile criminals, but also family members, workers, and lesser-known individuals. At the boundaries of Chicago's early 1900s organized crime networks were configurations of wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers, daughters, and female cousins and neighbors who contributed to organized crime's size, strength, structure, and durability. The broader impacts of this project are twofold. First, this project brings network science to the study of organized crime groups, which is a growing information gathering strategy for law enforcement. Applying network techniques to a historic topic of broad public interest "gangster era Chicago" improves our understanding of organized crime groups and provides relevant insights to public policy and law enforcement tactics. Second, this project continues the building efforts of a historic relational database on a topic of popular interest. Upon completion of analysis and publication, this database will be archived online and made publicly available.