Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

One Gang Dies, Another Gains? The Network Dynamics Of Criminal Group Persistence, Marie Ouellet, Martin Bouchard, Yanick Charette

CJC Publications

What leads a minority of criminal groups to persist over time? Although most criminal groups are characterized by short life spans, a subset manages to survive extended periods. Contemporary research on criminal groups has been primarily descriptive and static, leaving important questions on the correlates of group persistence unanswered. By drawing from competing perspectives on the relationship between cohesion and group persistence, we apply a longitudinal approach to examine the network dynamics influencing the life span of criminal groups. We use 9 years of official data on the criminal and social networks of gang associates in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to …