When Things Turn Sour: A Network Event Study of Organized Crime Violence
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Journal Title
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
ISSN
0748-4518
Publisher
Springer
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Campana, P., & Niezink, N. When Things Turn Sour: A Network Event Study of Organized Crime Violence. Journal of Quantitative Criminology https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78762
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.
Sponsorship
Leverhulme Trust (Research Grant RPG-2018-119
Funder references
Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2018-119)
Embargo Lift Date
2024-12-09
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78762
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331314
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