GANGNeT

Research Output

How Organized Crime Groups Interact: A Theory of Differential Cooperation

Interactions between organized crime groups (OCGs) are under-explored in the literature. We study the determinants of cooperative interactions among OCGs operating in Merseyside (UK) using the complete crime dataset integrated with neighborhood-level socio-economic data and sentencing outcomes. We first address the puzzle of the coexistence of stable illegal markets and OCG violence: drug markets are contendible and OCGs resort on cooperation to mitigate risks of unbounded competition. Hence, the nexus between markets and violence is mediated by the structure of inter-OCGs cooperation (or lack thereof). We find that, net of urban and socio-demographic factors, violence is consequential to cooperation failure. Second, as in illegal markets contracts are not enforceable, incentives to collaborate and profit-sharing mechanisms are distorted. We posit that OCGs select partners and collaborations to balance risks and opportunities. Relative to the former aspect, we show that cooperation is differential as it is more likely to realize between groups characterized by asymmetric control of territory. Relative to the latter, OCGs are selective in the nature of interactions, with a positive relationship between expected returns (and associated risks) and cooperation intensity. Importantly, this mechanism complements network-based strategies used by OCGs for mitigation of risks involved with partner selection

Status: Submitted for Publication

Becker in the City: a Theory of Crime Diffusion in Urban Landscapes

This paper studies the role of urban networks in the diffusion of crime across neighborhoods from a Beckerian perspective. We offer two contributions. First, we discipline the interaction between local (i.e. within neighborhood) and global (between neighborhoods) features of a city that may lead an idiosyncratic spike in the crime activity within some neighborhood to propagate across the city. We derive a theorem to show that the role of network is ambiguous: contagion is pinned down to the interconnectivity between two sets of neighborhood, vulnerable and trigger neighborhoods, and their socio-demographic properties. Depending on the connectivity between these two sets, urban networks can either amplify or dilute localized shocks. Therefore, we contend that strategies exclusively targeting vulnerable neighborhoods are not necessarily the most effective ones. Second, we use our theory to study crime diffusion in the London Metropolitan Area (UK). To do so, we calibrate our model on a very granular dataset comprising all crime events recorded in the London Metropolitan Area in years 2019-2022 together with a battery of granular socio-demographic indicators.

Status: In Progress.

The structure of cooperation among organized crime groups: A network study of Merseyside

No person is an island, and neither are criminal groups. Yet, limited attention has been paid by criminologists to the relational patterns established among groups operating within the same locale. In this paper, we study the structure and determinants of cooperative interactions among organized crime groups (OCGs) operating in Merseyside (UK). We leverage a police dataset including 5,239 crime reports handled by Merseyside Police between January 2015 and March 2018 (42 full months of data) concerning 1,211 OCG members belonging to 134 OCGs.

Status: Submitted for Publication.