Of feathers and birds : the role of offending peers in the transmission of violent offending in offender networks

Subtitle:Soort zoekt soort : de rol van criminele vrienden in de overdracht van gewelddadig daderschap in dadernetwerken

Abstract:Violent crime tends to follow recognizable patterns that unfold not only across space and time, but also through social relationships. While prior research has primarily emphasized environmental and situational explanations for the spread of (violent) crime, such perspectives often overlook the social processes that shape offending behavior. A growing body of work highlights the importance of interpersonal relationships and peer influence in the development and persistence of criminal behavior, suggesting that violence may diffuse through social ties rather than solely through spatial or temporal proximity. Over the last decade, researchers have increasingly turned to social network approaches to examine how crime, and particularly violent crime, may be transmitted through interpersonal connections. Co-offending networks, in which individuals are connected through jointly committed offenses, offer a valuable context to study these dynamics. Co-offending is often embedded in pre-existing social ties and shaped by group processes that can reinforce criminal behavior. These networks thus serve not only as an organizing structure for criminal collaboration, but potentially also as a medium for the diffusion of violent behavior. Despite these recent insights, the question of how violent offending behavior spreads through cooffending networks remains unexplored. Existing studies tend to examine violence either as a situational outcome of group offending, a risk factor for victimization, or a behavioral tendency shaped by exposure to violent peers. While each line of research offers important contributions, they often operate in isolation and overlook how violence may diffuse across the structure of co-offending networks. In particular, little is known about how offenders’ network positions, the nature of their cooffending interactions, and the criminal profiles of their associates might influence their own violent offending trajectories. This doctoral research addresses these gaps by adopting a network-based perspective to examine to what extent structural and interpersonal dynamics within co-offending networks help explain the transmission of physically violent offending behavior. To achieve this, this research draws upon complementary theoretical frameworks. The social structure social learning model, building on differential association and social learning theories, posits that violence is learned through interactions with others within social structures, particularly through mechanisms like reinforcement. The rational choice perspective enhances this by emphasizing offenders' agency in selecting co-offenders and weighing risks and rewards, offering insights into how violent ties may form. Finally, network criminology bridges these perspectives, providing a structural lens to understand how the positions and relationships within co-offending networks influence the spread of violent behavior. Together, these frameworks offer a comprehensive understanding of how violent offending behavior may propagate and evolve within criminal networks. Due to the limited literature on how violent offending spreads within co-offending networks, this dissertation first presents an integrative literature review (n = 39 studies) on adolescent peer networks. This review explored how social network compositions shape the transmission of deviant behavior, offering insights into peer influence mechanisms relevant to criminal behavior. By identifying key concepts, patterns, and gaps in the literature, this review lays the groundwork for the subsequent empirical analyses of violent offending behavior within co-offending networks. The first empirical study focused on how the structure of co-offending networks facilitates or hinders the spread of violent behavior, emphasizing the role of violent homophily among offenders. Using a police-recorded crime dataset of 33,815 offenders, the study examined whether violent offenders VI were more likely to co-offend with others of similar violent backgrounds, finding a pattern of behavioral homophily. The analysis further showed that violent behavior was more likely to spread within certain subcomponents of the co-offending network, rather than being uniformly distributed across the entire network. These findings highlight the importance of both behavioral homophily and network structure in shaping the transmission of violent offending within co-offending networks. The second empirical study focused on the extent to which co-offending interactions influence the persistence of violent offending behavior. Conducting two binary logistic regressions on policerecorded crime data (n = 20,203 offenders), the study examined the impact of the violent nature of cooffenders and co-offenses on future (violent) offending behavior. A prominent finding was that cooffending in violent acts significantly heightened the likelihood of future violent offending, indicating that direct participation in violence may be a critical mechanism in the transmission of violent offending behavior. While co-offending with violent individuals generally increased the likelihood of reoffending, violent co-offenses strongly influenced the persistence of violent offending in particular. These findings highlight the importance of both the type of co-offender and the nature of co-offenses in shaping the continuity of violent offending behavior within co-offending networks. The third empirical study focused on how violent behavior and co-offending interactions shape offenders' network positions within a co-offending network. Using police-recorded crime data (n = 1,693 offenders), the study examined the impact of violent offending and co-offender characteristics on offenders' centrality and importance within the network through three multinomial logistic regressions. Key findings showed that offenders who predominantly engaged in violent offenses were more likely to become less central, while severe violence increased prominence. In addition, cooffending with accomplices in intermediary positions increased an offender’s prominence, whereas those exclusively co-offending with violent individuals experienced greater instability in their position. The results underscore the role of both violent behavior and co-offending interactions in shaping offenders’ network positions. Together, the findings of this dissertation provide insights into the transmission of physically violent offending behavior within co-offending networks. By examining both structural and interpersonal dynamics, this research enhances our understanding of the mechanisms through which violent offending behavior may spread. The findings emphasize the critical role of network topology, highlighting how specific positions within a co-offending network may facilitate or hinder the diffusion of violence. Additionally, the research underscores the importance of the nature of co-offending relationships. The interconnectedness of structural and interpersonal dynamics also reveals how network positions can be shaped by offenders' criminal relationships. This doctoral research provides a more comprehensive framework for studying the transmission of violent offending, suggesting avenues for future research and informing the development of targeted interventions and policies aimed at disrupting violent crime transmission within criminal networks.

Publication year:2025

Accessibility:Embargoed