The Social Network Consequences of a Gang Murder Blowout

Alice Airola,Martin Bouchard

doi:10.3390/socsci9110204

Abstract

An unexpected crisis in a criminal organization offers a rare opportunity to analyze whether and how the configuration of business and trust relationships changes in response to external shocks. The current study recreates the social network of the Red Scorpion gang members involved in the Surrey Six Murder, one of the deadliest gang-related homicides to occur in Canada. The event, which involved two bystanders and six victims in total, was the result of a poorly executed retaliation. Our analyses focus on two phases of the network, the conspiracy phase and the post-murder phase. In each phase, we examine the balance of business, trust, and conflictual ties. Results show that the relative importance of key participants changed from the conspiracy to the post-murder phases, whereby strong, trusted ties gained prominence over the mostly business-oriented network of the conspiracy phase.

Highlights

Crime network scholars have sought to describe the inner workings of gangs and criminal organizations for long enough, that we have a general understanding of their structure, especially as it relates to specific activities such as drug trafficking (e.g., Bichler et al 2017; Bright and Delaney 2013; Calderoni 2012; Malm et al 2017; Malm and Bichler 2011; Morselli 2009; Natarajan 2006) and human smuggling (Bruinsma and Bernasco 2004; Campana 2020)
Can we dive inside a specific gang to examine how they manage relationships in trying times, such as when gang leaders are arrested, when a new gang challenges one’s turf, or when the gang is under fire for having killed one or multiple bystanders
Thethat post-murder the results show that theoccurred network evolved toward increased as would be predicted the same group under short analyzing time frame, the same we did group notgroup expect under athe short network time frame, to show we dramatic did not expect the network to the show dramatic who awere external to the group

Summary

Introduction

Crime network scholars have sought to describe the inner workings of gangs and criminal organizations for long enough, that we have a general understanding of their structure, especially as it relates to specific activities such as drug trafficking (e.g., Bichler et al 2017; Bright and Delaney 2013; Calderoni 2012; Malm et al 2017; Malm and Bichler 2011; Morselli 2009; Natarajan 2006) and human smuggling (Bruinsma and Bernasco 2004; Campana 2020). An increasing number of scholars have turned to network data to study conflicts among gangs (Bichler et al 2019; Descormiers and Morselli 2011; Lewis and Papachristos 2020; McCuish et al 2015; Papachristos 2009; Papachristos et al 2013). The current study proposes to take an inside look into a specific murder conspiracy gone wrong. In summer 2007, two criminal groups merged forces under the label of the

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Conclusion