The Influence of Gang Injunctions on the Structure of Co-Offending Networks and Police Recording Practices in the Field

• In Event: Criminal Network Analysis: Applications of Social Network Analysis to the Study of Co-Offending, Gangs and Violence

Abstract

Civil gang injunctions (CGI) are court orders akin to restraining orders, that restricts certain specified behaviors of members of specified groups. Among the many behaviors they seek to restrict, CGIs almost invariably target associations of gang members within well-defined geographic boundaries. Presumably, an effective CGI would deter gang members from associating in public places, at least within the defined geographic zone. At the same time, CGIs require that individual members of the targeted gang be served with the injunction, which may lead to increase in police activity in the targeted zone. Such an increase may in turn increase the chances that groups will be recorded in police data. The current study examines the effect of a gang injunction in Long Beach, California on the structure of social networks extracted from police data. I examine two types of networks: those constructed from arrest data and those constructed from officers' informal contacts in the field (Field interview cards or FI cards). Preliminary results suggest that both the density of co-arrest and co-FI networks decreases after the implementation of the CGI, suggesting that the intervention influenced patterns of associations of gang members.

Author

• Jason Gravel, University of California, Irvine