The Social Network Consequences of a Gang Murder Blowout

Alice Airola and Martin Bouchard
Additional contact information
Alice Airola: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada
Martin Bouchard: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada

Social Sciences, 2020, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-15

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.

Keywords: gangs; social networks; crisis; organized crime; homicide; violence; retaliation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/11/204/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/11/204/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:11:p:204-:d:443220

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().