Dark networks : criminal collaboration in Australian police forces

The study aimed to investigate why police officers engage in corruption, the role of trust in facilitating and bonding officers together to allow them to participate in large-scale or serious corruption, and the network structures that result from these relationships. The findings revealed that officers collaborated and operated under a network structure reinforced by a subculture of unwritten rules, codes and acceptance by senior officers. This network was found to be dynamic, shifting in structure, membership and activity, but remained highly clustered and cohesive around a few core actors in the network. Additionally, the corruption network operated on relationships based on collaborations of trust. Officers used trustworthiness attributes, personal experience and third party information to assess whether a fellow officer was trustworthy enough to be a member of the corruption network, which resulted in a ‘pipeline’ of trust.