Related papers: Why Locking Up Cartel Members Does not Work

Every year, Mexican cartels lose many members due to conflict with other cartels and arrests. Yet, despite their losses, cartels have managed to increase violence for years. We address this puzzle by leveraging data on the number of…

This paper is a comment to a recent paper which appeared in Science, presenting a mathematical model of the size distribution, in terms of manpower, of the drugs cartels in Mexico. I show that the model is undetermined and that the main…

Organised crime in Mexico threatens societal stability and public safety, driving pervasive violence and economic disruption. Despite security investments and social programs designed in part to reduce involvement in crime, cartel power and…

Certain crimes are hardly committed by individuals but carefully organised by group of associates and affiliates loosely connected to each other with a single or small group of individuals coordinating the overall actions. A common starting…

This paper reviews the research on the impacts of incarceration on crime. Where data availability permits, reviewed studies are replicated and reanalyzed. Among three dozen studies I reviewed, I obtained or reconstructed the data and code…

The interplay between criminal organizations and law enforcement disruption strategies is crucial in criminology. Criminal enterprises, like legitimate businesses, balance visibility and security to thrive. This study uses evolutionary game…

Gang violence is a major problem in the United States accounting for a large fraction of homicides and other violent crime. In this paper, we study the problem of early identification of violent gang members. Our approach relies on modified…

Cybercrimes are on the rise, in part due to technological advancements, as well as increased avenues of exploitation. Sophisticated threat actors are leveraging on such advancements to execute their malicious intentions. The increase in…

Modern threats have emerged from the prevalence of social networks. Hostile actors, such as extremist groups or foreign governments, utilize these networks to run propaganda campaigns with different aims. For extremists, these campaigns are…

Analysis of criminal networks is inherently difficult because of the nature of the topic. Criminal networks are covert and most of the information is not publicly available. This leads to small datasets available for analysis. The available…

This survey paper offers a thorough analysis of techniques and algorithms used in the identification of crime leaders within criminal networks. For each technique, the paper examines its effectiveness, limitations, potential for…

The study of criminal networks using traces from heterogeneous communication media is acquiring increasing importance in nowadays society. The usage of communication media such as phone calls and online social networks leaves digital traces…

Punishing those who refuse to participate in common efforts is a known and intensively studied way to maintain cooperation among self-interested agents. But this act is costly, hence punishers who are generally also engaged in the original…

In this paper, the total payoff of each agent is regulated to reduce the heterogeneity of the distribution of the total payoffs. It is found there is an optimal regulation strength where the fraction of cooperation is prominently promoted,…

We model the hierarchical evolution of an organized criminal network via antagonistic recruitment and pursuit processes. Within the recruitment phase, a criminal kingpin enlists new members into the network, who in turn seek out other…

Contact tracing, the practice of isolating individuals who have been in contact with infected individuals, is an effective and practical way of containing disease spread. Here, we show that this strategy is particularly effective in the…

Regulatory authorities aim to tackle illegal activities by targeting the economic incentives that drive such behaviour. This is typically achieved through the implementation of financial sanctions against the entities involved in the…

As a simple model for criminal behavior, the traditional two-strategy inspection game yields counterintuitive results that fail to describe empirical data. The latter shows that crime is often recurrent, and that crime rates do not respond…

Criminal networks such as human trafficking rings are threats to the rule of law, democracy and public safety in our global society. Network science provides invaluable tools to identify key players and design interventions for Law…

This note considers cartel stability when the cartelized products are vertically differentiated. If market shares are maintained at pre-collusive levels, then the firm with the lowest competitive price-cost margin has the strongest…