During the course of the project, we performed research work in two parallel directions.
The first direction deals with understanding what is the influence of crime flows across various areas of urban landscapes. To address this problem, we first developed a mathematical theory of diffusion of behavior of complex social networks. Urban landscapes are characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity in multiple dimensions. Hence, economic opportunities, human flows and, relatedly, crime behavior are embedded within a complex multi-layer morphology. We disciplined the interaction between local (i.e. within neighborhood) and global (between neighborhoods) features of a city that may lead to an idiosyncratic spike in the crime activity within some neighborhood to propagate across a city. We derived a theorem to show that the role of network is ambiguous: contagion is pinned down to the interconnectivity between neighborhoods, and their socio-demographic properties. Depending on the connectivity, urban networks can either amplify or dilute localized shocks. The main result we obtain in this dimension is to show that strategies exclusively targeting vulnerable neighborhoods are not necessarily the most effective ones.
The second dimension we investigated is given by the mechanisms of interaction of organized crime groups (OCGs). We studied 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 for years 2018-2022. We first addressed the puzzle of the coexistence of stable illegal markets and OCG violence. We found 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 posited that OCGs select partners and collaborations to balance risks and opportunities. Relative to the former aspect, we showed 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.
Results from both research streams have been disseminated at general level and to selected practitioners and specialists. General audience dissemination has taken place through participation to the Intersection event organized by the E.U. Dissemination to stakeholders/practitioners has taken place through participation of 2 workshops and two ad-hoc meetings. Communication to specialists has taken place with participation to 6 world-level conference, an internal international workshop and PhD training event.
