Modelling the dynamics of Violent Gang-Crime: a Network approach

GANGNET is a project motivated by two intertwined emergencies of contemporary EU urban landscape: (1) the emergence of stable co-offending groups (2) the rapid propagation of inter-group violence (e.g. “knife epidemics” in UK).

The key of my research is the use of innovative techniques from network theory and computational methods to inform regulators with better gang-crime risk prediction and more effective containment strategies.

Relational networks are recognized as drivers of individual’s criminal activity: criminal groups are both organizations as well as social environments. For members of co-offending groups, interaction is both at group-level and at inter-group level.

At the current state of art, little is known about the channel by which inter-personal links affect inter-group dynamics and trigger systemic phenomena.

Therefore, it is unclear what individual-level factors EU policy-makers should monitor to control systemic urgencies such as the outbreak of group violence epidemics or formation of criminal alliances. Regulators contain crime via offender or groups-focused devices.

However, as offenders and groups act within endogenous networks, unintended consequences such as increased inter-gang instability and violence can emerge as the result of spurious containment attempts.The project uncovers the theoretical and empirical structure of gang dynamics by adopting a network perspective.

The goal is to understand how individuals act upon the influence of a stratified social network and to what extent isolated behaviour from single individuals can trigger inter-group system-wide dynamics.

The project is developed along three directions aiming to understand how: (1) interaction between incentive-driven offenders determine group-level activities (2) group-level activities can lead to systemically relevant phenomena that unfold through relational networks (3) develop synthetic metrics to measure effectiveness of individual or group based containment policies