How can we leverage relational information to prevent youth violence? Professor Paolo Campana, Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, will lead an 18-month study on criminal networks and their influence on youth violence.
Called ‘Breaking Youth Networks of Serious Violence’, the study is being conducted in collaboration with Cambridgeshire Constabulary and supported by the Nuffield Foundation.
By leveraging four years of police data from Cambridgeshire, this study aims to explore how relational factors, including connections with known offenders, can impact the likelihood of an at-risk young person committing serious violence or being a victim of serious violence.
Previous studies have focused either on individual factors, such as trauma or abuse, or community factors, such as deprivation of their area. However, networks and connections are comparatively understudied.
This study is part of a small but growing body of research on violence networks. Prior studies were carried out in large US cities with very high levels of violence and segregation, such as Boston and Chicago. They pointed to the increased risk of gunshot victimisation among offenders if they are connected to a gang member or to a person who has been a victim of gunshot victimisation. However, works exploring networks of violence in the UK context are very rare. A previous study by Professor Campana and the Institute’s former Marie Sklodowska-Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dr Andrea Giovannetti, has shown that being connected to someone who had been found by the police carrying a knife increases the probability of a person’s committing serious violence. No study so far has explicitly focused on youth networks of violence.
Campana’s study will use police data from across Cambridgeshire to identify mechanisms and vulnerabilities among at-risk youth and help practitioners devise future, tailored, interventions to reduce violence and protect young people.
The results of this study will inform the growing discourse around relational networks, both in violence and crime more broadly. Crucially, it will be applicable on a local, national, and global level.
“With this project, we are putting our expertise to the service of our local communities,” says Campana “showing the University’s commitment to enhance global scholarship but also to solve local problems and better the lives of people locally. I am very grateful to the Nuffield Foundation and Cambridgeshire Constabulary for making this possible”.
Professor Campana has previously carried out studies on the roles of criminal networks in human trafficking, human smuggling, drug trade and organised crime.
For more information about the project, see the Nuffield Foundation website