When Things Turn Sour: A Network Event Study of Organized Crime Violence

Abstract

Objective: This study examines the mechanisms underpinning the emergence of violence among individuals in the organized crime milieu. Methods: Relying on criminal event data recorded by a UK Police Force, we apply a longitudinal network approach to study violent interactions among offenders. The data span the period from 2000 to 2016 and include 6,234 offenders and 23,513 organized crime-related events. Instead of aggregating these data over time, we use a relational event-based approach to take into consideration the order of events. We employ an actor-oriented framework to model offenders’ victim choices in 156 violent events in the OC milieu. Results: We find that the choice of offenders to target a particular victim is strongly affected by their mutual history. A violent act is often preceded by a previous act of violence, both in the form of repeated violence and reciprocated violence. We show that violence is strongly associated with prior co-offending turning sour. We uncover a strong effect for previous harassment as a retaliation cum escalation mechanism. Finally, we find evidence of conflicts within organized crime groups and of violence being directed to offenders with the same ethnic background. Conclusions: Relational effects on victimization are consistently stronger than the effects of individual characteristics. Therefore, in a policy perspective, we believe that relational red flags (or risk factors) should play a more central role. A focus on harassment could be valuable in the development of an early intervention strategy.