Abstract
This paper describes the output of a study to tackle the problem of gang-related crime in the UK; we present the intelligence and routinely-gathered data available to a UK regional police force, and describe an initial social network analysis of gangs in the Greater Manchester area of the UK between 2000 and 2006. By applying social network analysis techniques, we attempt to detect the birth of two new gangs based on local features (modularity, cliques) and global features (clustering coefficients). Thus for the future, identifying the changes in these can help us identify the possible birth of new gangs (sub-networks) in the social system. Furthermore, we study the dynamics of these networks globally and locally, and have identified the global characteristics that tell us that they are not random graphs—they are small world graphs—implying that the formation of gangs is not a random event. However, we are not yet able to conclude anything significant about scale-free characteristics due to insufficient sample size. A final analysis looks at gang roles and develops further insight into the nature of the different link types, referring to Klerks’ ’third generation’ analysis, as well as a brief discussion of the potential UK policy applications of this work.
Highlights
There have been numerous studies of criminal networks and gangs; as highlighted in Hughes (2005), the popularity of qualitative studies of gang-related issues soared during the 1980s and 1990s, following renewed media and public interest, statistical advances, and increased government funding
In Greater Manchester, a region in the north of the UK that has had a significant gun crime problem related to gang activity, primarily due to acute social deprivation in the area (BBC News, 2003, 2004; Hales et al, 2006), recent police initiatives have started to address this problem (BBC News, 2010)
The Manchester Multi-Agency Gang Strategy (MMAGS), a multiagency approach to tackling gun crime and deterring young people from entering into a gang/gun culture was initiated as a result of a UK Home Office report (Bullock and Tilley, 2002)
Summary
There have been numerous studies of criminal networks and gangs; as highlighted in Hughes (2005), the popularity of qualitative studies of gang-related issues soared during the 1980s and 1990s, following renewed media and public interest, statistical advances, and increased government funding. We develop the statistical analysis of network dynamics, combining wellknown global topological measures, local motifs and modules The Manchester Multi-Agency Gang Strategy (MMAGS), a multiagency approach to tackling gun crime and deterring young people from entering into a gang/gun culture was initiated as a result of a UK Home Office report (Bullock and Tilley, 2002). We investigate if the networks have – Violence in general, gun violence and fatal shootings scale-free, small-world or other characteristics in particular are concentrated in specific small areas (Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Newman, 2003; Watts, 2003); of South Manchester. Atively small number of steps to a huge network size – Gang-related criminal behaviour includes drug-related defined by the total number of nodes. Agreeing strongly with the 2002 UK Home Office report (Bullock and Tilley, 2002) we find: 38% (n=162) of all serious crimes occurring within 1 km radius (of gang locations) and 63% of all serious crimes occur within 2 km, and 53% (n=9) of murders are within 3 km; 38% (n=34) of attempted murders are within 1 km and 63% within 2 km; and, 33% (n=17) of serious woundings are within 1 km and 48% are within 2 km
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