Description:

Connected in Crime: How Co-Offending Networks Influence The Contagion of Gun Violence

Wednesdays@NICO Seminar | 12:00-1:00PM March 11, 2015 | Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Andrew Papachristos, Associate Professor of Sociology, Yale University

Abstract
The unequal spatial distribution of crime is an enduring feature of most U.S. cities. Research suggests that diffusion processes heighten this concentration, with elevated rates of crime occurring between spatially contiguous neighborhoods. Yet, the mechanisms of diffusion are not well understood. Most statistical models rely solely on geographic distance—as if crime spreads like an airborne pathogen. Few studies pay theoretical attention to the ways in which people, groups, and behaviors link neighborhoods. Still fewer studies measure these pathways of diffusion. Using police administrative records and data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, this paper examines how social networks created by patterns of co-offending create an unseen “network of neighborhoods” that facilitates the diffusion of crime. We maintain that observed patterns of co-offending establish links across neighborhoods, facilitating the flow of criminal activities. Descriptive analyses suggest that co-offending ties between 172,714 unique individuals form an underlying network that provide direct and indirect pathways between all Chicago neighborhoods. Exponential Random Graph Models examine which neighborhood structural characteristics, social processes, and endogenous network properties produce these ties between neighborhoods. Finally, spatial autocorrelation models are used to investigate the relationship between co-offending ties during 1999-2004 and spatial patterning of crime during 2006-2010.​