Evolutionary dynamics of organised crime and terrorist networks

Abstract

Crime is pervasive into modern societies, although with different levels of diffusion across regions. Its dynamics are dependent on various socio-economic factors that make the overall picture particularly complex. While several theories have been proposed to account for the establishment of criminal behaviour, from a modelling perspective organised crime and terrorist networks received much less attention. In particular, the dynamics of recruitment into such organisations deserve specific considerations, as recruitment is the mechanism that makes crime and terror proliferate. We propose a framework able to model such processes in both organised crime and terrorist networks from an evolutionary game theoretical perspective. By means of a stylised model, we are able to study a variety of different circumstances and factors influencing the growth or decline of criminal organisations and terrorist networks, and observe the convoluted interplay between agents that decide to get associated to illicit groups, criminals that prefer to act on their own, and the rest of the civil society.

Contributors

Luis A. Martinez-Vaquero:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8194-8757

[e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 5 July 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 5 July 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 9

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 1940 4177, GRID grid.5326.2, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, , National Research Council of Italy, ; via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185 Rome, Italy

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0668 7884, GRID grid.5596.f, Present Address: Lab of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Department of Biology, , KU Leuven, ; Naamsestraat 59, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1757 5281, GRID grid.6045.7, INFN Roma1, ; Rome, Italy

[4 ]GRID grid.7841.a, Physics Department, , Sapienza University of Rome, ; Rome, Italy

Article

Publisher ID: 46141

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-46141-8

PMC ID: 6611905

PubMed ID: 31278354

Copyright statement: © The Author(s) 2019

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funding

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001667, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM);

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/100010661, EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020);

Award ID: 699824

Award Recipient : Vito Trianni

Funded by: FP7 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant - GA: 631297

Categories

Subject: Article

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2019