1. Introduction
Crime network scholars have sought to describe the inner workings of gangs and criminal organizations for long enough, now, that we have a general understanding of their structure, especially as it relates to specific activities such as drug trafficking (e.g.,
Bichler et al. 2017;
Bright and Delaney 2013;
Calderoni 2012;
Malm et al. 2017;
Malm and Bichler 2011;
Morselli 2009;
Natarajan 2006) and human smuggling (
Bruinsma and Bernasco 2004;
Campana 2020). More recently, an increasing number of scholars have turned to network data to study conflicts among gangs (
Bichler et al. 2019;
Descormiers and Morselli 2011;
Lewis and Papachristos 2020;
McCuish et al. 2015;
Papachristos 2009;
Papachristos et al. 2013). Rarely, however, can we dive inside a specific gang to examine how they manage relationships in trying times, such as when gang leaders are arrested, when a new gang challenges one’s turf, or when the gang is under fire for having killed one or multiple bystanders.
The current study proposes to take an inside look into a specific murder conspiracy gone wrong. The conspiracy involves one of the most famous criminal organizations based in British Columbia (BC), Canada, the Red Scorpions. In summer 2007, two criminal groups merged forces under the label of the Red Scorpions (RS). The alliance expanded the organization, which now had two sides, the “Asian” and the “White” side, labeled as such by the members themselves. The so-called Asian side was led by Michael Le, the original founder of the Red Scorpions, while the White side was led by James Bacon, the leader of another criminal group involved in drug trafficking in the same area. The purpose of the merger was to improve the two groups’ power within the drug trade via cooperation, including an improved ability to defend their turf against rivals when required.
With its loose hierarchy and emphasis on loyalty and symbolism, the Red Scorpions shared some organizational features with some of the mature, business-oriented gangs found in the American (e.g.,
Bichler et al. 2019;
Papachristos 2009) or Canadian (e.g.,
Descormiers and Morselli 2011) literature. Gang members could be identified by “RS” tattoos on their arms and necks, and the new members had to pass a sort of probatory period before being accepted as part of the Red Scorpion family. The main business of the Red Scorpions was running drug lines in the Lower Mainland, what locals labeled as “dial-a-dope” operations—a text messaging drug delivery service. At the time of the merger, approximately 30 to 40 members had the tattoos and were considered official members. Among them, approximately 20 to 30 individuals regularly attended the Red Scorpions meetings.
Court documents revealed that a few months after the merger, “bad blood” developed between James Bacon and a rival drug dealer, Corey Lal. Bacon threatened his rival’s life and decided to tax him $100,000 as a way of resolving the dispute. But Lal never paid, so a conspiracy for his murder took shape. Otherwise, the RS group would look weak and powerless. Three members of the Asian Side, leader Michael Le, Matthew Johnston, and Cody Haevischer, along with four members of the White side, leader James Bacon, Person X, Person Y, and Kevin Leclair, participated in the conspiracy. The Surrey Six Murder took place on 19 October 2007, when Johnston, Haevischer, and a third unnamed accomplice (“Person X”) broke into an apartment located in Surrey, BC, where Lal was used to carrying out his activities related to the drug business. That day, Lal was not alone; another four people were with him in the apartment, including one individual who was not involved in the drug trade. Another person, not involved in the drug trade, was dragged into the apartment from the hallway. All six people were shot to death in an attempt at eliminating any possible witnesses.
The Surrey Six Murder was the result of a series of unexpected external contingencies that thrust the organization into a crisis. The concept of crisis here refers to the chaotic group response that followed the gang homicide. The execution of six people was neither planned nor wanted by the group; the organization was not ready to deal with such a major event a few months after the merger and did not have a precise strategy to follow in case of unexpected contingencies. The aim of this study is to examine the social network consequences of this event on a major criminal organization like the Red Scorpions. Several studies have examined the effects of a crisis on legal organizations, but few studied crises in criminal organizations. Does the network become more cohesive—a sort of retrenchment phase—or does it instead break and fragment itself? We use social network analysis (SNA) as an integrative framework to describe both the network consequences for the organization, and the individuals within it.
2. Group Structure and Individual Centrality in Times of Crises
Organizational crises have been operationalized in different ways, including organizational death, decline, retrenchment, and failure (
Mellahi and Wilkinson 2004). All definitions share a common feature: they underline that group crises have consequences on organizational structures and dynamics.
Sociologists have primarily focused on group dynamics and changes during crises in legitimate organizations (i.e.,
Hamblin 1958;
Fink et al. 1971;
Mulder et al. 1971;
Tutzauer 1985;
Uddin et al. 2010;
Hossain et al. 2013). A number of studies have explored group dynamics during crises through the lens of SNA (e.g.,
Tutzauer 1985;
Uddin et al. 2010;
Hossain et al. 2013). These studies highlighted how a crisis within an organization impacts its internal structure or cohesion. Cohesion refers to the degree of connectedness of nodes within a network: The more people who are connected to each other, the more a network can be defined as cohesive. The inverse of cohesion is fragmentation, which refers to the proportion of nodes within a network that cannot reach each other by any path (
Borgatti 2006).
Network scholars have discussed two effects of crises: (1) network fragmentation increases, creating multiple cliques (small, highly connected groups) (i.e.,
Uddin et al. 2010;
Hossain et al. 2013); (2) homophily increases (i.e., see
Lanzetta 1955). Homophily and network fragmentation are related concepts. The term “homophily” refers to the tendency of people to interact more with individuals they perceive as similar (
McPherson et al. 2001). Fragmentation may increase homophilic individuals’ tendencies to interact with similar others—and vice versa: a person’s tendency toward homophily may itself lead to more fragmentation in times of crises, when the benefits of homophilous connections may also increase. For instance,
Hossain et al. (
2013) examined the crisis that afflicted the Enron Corporation in 2001. Enron was one of the most important American energy, commodities, and services companies between 1985 and 2000. The authors analyzed Enron’s e-mail networks, deriving from the large set of messages released by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to assess the changes that occurred in the communication network structures during the year of the crisis in 2001. The results showed a sharp increase in the number of cliques as the organization moved toward the peak of the crisis. Network members faced the crisis by increasing communication within small groups of people who felt closer to each other.
Tutzauer (
1985) claimed that, when two communication networks with the same number of ties and nodes are compared, the network characterized by the higher number of cliques is likely to be closer to dissolution. Yet, the presence of the cliques does not necessarily imply fragmentation of the whole organization.
Stogdill (
1959) suggested that group integration is higher when the subgroups are well coordinated and support the structure and the objectives of the larger group. In this context, subgroups or cliques can represent an escape from the organizational pressure and contribute to reinforcing the values and the identification of clique members with the larger group structure (
Stogdill 1959). However, too much independence may hinder survival in the long run.
It is unclear whether illegal organizations behave similarly when crises occur. Some indirect results from studies examining the consequences of fragmentation have shown that an increase in fragmentation within illegal organizations has often led to increased competition and violence among newly born small groups (i.e.,
Massari and Martone 2019;
Atuesta and Pérez-Dávila 2018;
Falcone and Padovani 1991;
Vargas 2014).
Massari and Martone (
2019) argued that the high level of fragmentation characterizing the Camorra is one of the explanatory factors used to understand the extremely violent nature of this criminal organization.
Atuesta and Pérez-Dávila (
2018) showed that the fragmentation within Mexican cartels led to a significant increase in intra-gang violence.
Falcone and Padovani (
1991) explained how inter-clan conflicts made the Italian organized groups more visible to the law enforcement, thus allowing the implementation of repressive actions that weakened the power of the Sicilian Mafia. The impact of crises may depend on the structure of the group. For example,
Vargas (
2014) showed that the arrest of two street gangs’ leaders in Chicago led to increased inter-gang violence, but only within the group that lacked a solid organizational structure.
Few scholars have explored the effects of crises on criminal organizations from a network perspective. Some studies have examined the changes in criminal networks through different periods and have highlighted the flexibility that characterizes criminal networks when facing hard or unstable times (e.g.,
Bright and Delaney 2013;
Ouellet et al. 2017;
Ouellet and Bouchard 2018).
Bright and Delaney (
2013) examined the change and the evolution of a drug trafficking network across time and found that networks are flexible and adaptive structures following a process of adaptation similar to living organisms. Much on network adaptation can also be learned from crises occurring in terrorist groups. After all, these groups also manage their social networks, in part, to avoid law enforcement detection.
Ouellet et al. (
2017) studied the processes that drove collaboration between offenders in the Al-Qaeda (AQ) network before and after 9/11 (war on terror period). They found that although AQ leaders were still involved in planning activities after 9/11, they did so from an increased social distance, in sparser networks. Crises may also be driven by internal forces. Dissension between leader may, for instance, fragment the network, forcing the dissolution of many intragroup ties as leaders pull away from each other (
Ouellet and Bouchard 2018).
A few organized crime scholars have described retrenchment processes that are helpful in framing our expectations toward the effects of crises on criminal organizations.
Paoli (
2007) described the reaction of Cosa Nostra to a massive law enforcement activity that threatened the organization. From a structural point of view, the solution of one of the most famous (and infamous) Italian Mafia bosses in modern history, Bernardo Provenzano, to ensure the cohesion and avoid potential defectors, was reducing the number of “men of honor” and creating a criminal elite to protect himself and the most important criminal members from police actions (
Paoli 2007). The same strategy was adopted by Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs in the US in similar circumstances. According to
Quinn (
2001), during a crisis, many of these clubs implemented a sort of “retrenchment” phase consisting of reducing the group size and creating an elite group based on core members.
From a network perspective, the “retrenchment strategy” suggests that, when facing crises, criminal organizations may adapt by decreasing the size of the organization, thus creating a smaller cohesive group of core members. The retrenchment strategy mentioned by
Paoli (
2007) and
Quinn (
2001) differs from the network fragmentation described by network communication scholars because of the way in which it impacts network structure and size. For example, the Enron group did not face the crisis by reducing network size, or by creating a single highly connected group of individuals (
Hossain et al. 2013). The retrenchment strategy implies a significant decrease in network size, and the formation of one cohesive small group to protect the core members of the organization.
The effect of crises can also be analyzed from the point of view of individual group members. A few actors may benefit from the crises, improving their position in the network as a direct consequence of the events (
Uddin et al. 2010). For instance, organizations may look to leaders for direction (
Lanzetta 1955), which may increase their influence during periods of crises (
Hamblin 1958), especially if they are counted on to control communications (
Argote et al. 1989). The limited evidence for changes in criminal leaders’ network positions is mixed (
McCuish et al. 2015;
Morselli and Petit 2007;
Ouellet et al. 2017). Ultimately, whether leaders emerge as stronger or weaker from a crisis may well depend on the attribution of blame—was the crisis caused by the leaders in the first place? For instance,
Morselli and Petit (
2007) examined a criminal organization that faced a crisis of confidence as the police started seizing each of their drug shipments while refraining from arresting anyone over the course of the 18-month investigation. This allowed them to monitor how the network reacted and adapted to the crisis. Network members showed increased dissatisfaction and distrust with the initial leaders, who eventually lost their central role in the network after new leaders emerged.
3. Shared Goals, Trust, and Control as Elements of Cohesion and Individual Centrality
The quality of the ties connecting people, and the level of control exercised by some group members over others, may impact the way in which a criminal organization faces a crisis. In this study, we differentiated between three types of ties: trust ties (i.e., strong), business ties (i.e., weak), and conflict ties (negative). Different types of ties are linked to different kinds of social needs. Weak ties allow for efficient information flow (
Granovetter 1973), but strong ties that provide social support may be most needed in times of uncertainty and crisis (
Krackhardt 1992). We will examine this possibility directly by comparing the balance of strong, weak, and negative ties, and after the murder.
Relational aspects such as shared goals and trust among group members may play a key role in building strong group cohesion. Shared goals and trust are two key elements of criminal cooperation (
Morselli 2009;
von Lampe and Johansen 2004). Criminal relationships based merely on business interests, without the trust element, can be too weak to resist during times of crisis. According to
Paoli (
2008b), the weakening of solidarity and trust bonds in the Sicilian Mafia in the mid-2000s has caused a growth in the number of cooperating witnesses and a decrease in the criminal group’s cohesion. Being surrounded by trustworthy offenders is even more important for those offenses that imply a higher degree of risk because they face the most serious consequences (
Tremblay 1993;
McCuish et al. 2015).
In this study, the level of control was articulated around (1) strategic network positioning of individuals; (2) the presence within the network of triadic groups based on strong ties. First, some individuals are more likely to exercise control over others by virtue of the strategic positions they occupy within their networks, a concept that can be measured via betweenness centrality (
Morselli 2009). Betweenness centrality captures an individual’s capacity to connect others who would not be connected otherwise. Higher betweenness values are associated with the ability to control the flow of information and resources in a network (
Freeman 1977). Second,
Simmel (
1989) argued that triadic relationships based on strong ties have the power to reduce individualities, moderating conflicts and preserving group survival by imposing a certain level of control on individuals (
Krackhardt 1999). In other words, triads based on strong ties are a source of both control and social support for their members. In our study we identified as “strong ties” the relationships between individuals who share the same criminal goals but who also trust each other.
6. Results
Figure 1 represents the Surrey Six Murder network before and after the murder, respectively. The squared nodes represent the individuals who took part in the conspiracy; in brown are the Asian side’s members, while in orange, the White side’s members. The blue square in
Figure 1a indicates that Sophon Sek was present during the conspiracy but was not part of the Red Scorpions group. The round nodes represent the individuals who were not directly involved in the conspiracy but who, for some reason, played a role in the Surrey Six Murder story. The red round nodes and the gray nodes in
Figure 1b represent, respectively, the newcomers (nodes who were not present in the pre-murder network) and the nodes who disappeared after the murder.
Node size was determined by betweenness centrality values; the larger the node, the higher its betweenness centrality score within the network. At first glance, we notice that the leader Michael Le and the other members of the Asian side occupied a central position in both the pre- and the post-murder network, while the members of the White side, led by James Bacon (in bold), seemed to play a more marginal role, especially after the murder. The colors of the ties stand for the quality of the relationships that bonded the nodes together. The black lines indicate that nodes were connected through a business relationship, the green lines represent relationships based on both trust and shared business goals, while the red lines represent the relationships characterized by shared business goals and some level of conflict. In
Figure 1b the gray lines represent the relationships that disappeared after the murder, while the bold lines represent the new relationships that were not present before the murder.
Looking at the green ties, it is possible to identify the strong positive cliques composed of three trust ties. The clique that included Cody Haevischer, K.M., and Matthew Johnston, present in both the pre- and post-murder networks, is an example of a strong positive triad. On the other hand, the cliques with red, green, and black lines, such as the clique comprising Le, Haevischer, and Johnston in both networks, represent an unbalanced triad. Finally, the balanced triads are characterized by two green lines and one black line, such as the one including Jonathon Bacon, James Bacon and Haevischer in the post-murder network.
6.1. Network Structures before and afetr the Murder
To start, we examine the structures, the quality of ties, and the level of control in the network before and after the murder. The post-murder network represented the group during a period of crisis. The study focused on a period of about one year. The pre-murder phase referred to the period from the merger, which occurred in summer 2007, to the murder in October 2007. The post-murder phase referred to the events that followed the murder until Spring 2008. Given that we were analyzing the same group under a short time frame, we did not expect the network to show dramatic changes. Yet we did expect the group to have made adjustments as they managed the aftermath of the event.
Table 1 presents a number of characteristics of the network before and after the murder. Overall, the results show that the network evolved toward increased fragmentation, as would be predicted by the literature on the impact of crises on social networks.
First, the network changed only slightly in size, with two more individuals and seven additional ties after the murder. Second, cohesion, which included both the density and the degree of centralization of the network, declined after the murder, with the former decreasing from 0.269 to 0.233 and the latter decreasing from 0.765 to 0.637. The decrease in centralization indicated that ties were spreading out across the network, potentially making pre-murder hubs less central than before. This was also consistent with the increased number of cliques (from six to eight) that we noticed post-murder. Average degree remained stable, showing that people did not change the number of connections they had; it was how these connections were spread out that differed.
Some changes to the post-murder network involved the quality of the ties. We observed that the proportion of trust ties increased post-murder, from 11.8% to 16.3%. The proportion of business and conflict ties remained similar.
The quantity of unbalanced triads did not vary after the murder. Both the pre- and post-murder networks were characterized by three unbalanced triads. The unbalanced cliques mostly involved core conspiracy members, such as Michael Le, Matthew Johnston, Cody Haevischer, and Person Y. The only individual involved in the unbalanced cliques who was not directly involved in the murder and who was not officially part of the Red Scorpions group was K.M—Haevischer’s girlfriend and the only woman in the network.
Where things changed, post-murder, was with the balanced triads. Indeed, no balanced triad was identifiable in the pre-murder network. Yet, three balanced triads formed after the murder. The post-murder balanced cliques included two core conspiracy members, James Bacon and Cody Haevischer, as well as three non-conspiracy members: K.M, Jonathon Bacon, and Justin Haevischer. The addition of three family/romantic ties (two brothers and a girlfriend) increased balance in the network.
The analysis of the dyadic connections characterizing the pre- and the post-murder networks further clarified what is stated above. On the one hand, the individuals who were part of the RS group and took part in the conspiracy were mostly linked to each other through business or conflict ties. On the other hand, all the trust connections in the network linked core conspiracy members to nodes who were external to the group.
6.2. Individual Level of Analysis
Table 2 shows the individual centrality measures and the individual tie quality both before and after the murder. We assessed the nodes’ betweenness centrality by comparing the values related to the pre- and post-murder networks; thus, only those individuals who were present both before and after the murder are included in the table.
Before the murder, individuals from the so-called Asian side of the Red Scorpions were the most prominent in terms of brokerage. All three of Johnston, Le, and Haevischer had the highest betweenness centrality scores—both before and after the murder. We could have expected James Bacon, the leader who gave rise to the dispute, to play a more important role in the Surrey Six Murder. Johnston, Le, and Haevischer were also central in terms of trust relationships. Each of them had at least one trust connection in the network. However, all three were also surrounded by a conflict tie that weakened the overall quality of their relationships. As for the outsiders to the RS or to the conspiracy, it’s worth noting that K.M occupied a unique position in the pre-murder network in terms of tie quality (two trust ties), a position that she consolidated after the murder when she added a third trusted tie.
After the murder, some changes occurred. First, none of the two leaders improved their network position. While Le experienced a slight decrease in betweenness, Johnston and Haevisher both improved their pre-murder positions. None of the RS from the White side noticeably improved their positions. Second, when focusing on tie quality, the node who experienced the greatest increase in betweenness, Haevischer, was also the one who had the largest increase in trust connections, from two to four. Leader Michael Le lost his sole trust tie post-murder—the only individual to lose a trust connection. Third, two nodes who substantially increased their betweenness centrality after the murder, K.M. and Windsor Nguyen, were not core conspiracy members. The increase in betweenness centrality was particularly evident in the case of K.M., who became one of the most central individuals in the network after the murder.
Finally, five new individuals appeared after the murder, three of whom were Red Scorpion members’ relatives: Jonathon Bacon (James’ brother); Justin Haevischer (Cody’s brother); Mike Nguyen (Windsor’s brother). The newcomers were not involved in the conspiracy and played marginal roles in the network. However, they were rather central in terms of trust connections. Justin Haevischer, for instance, was surrounded by three trust connections, two of which linked him to core conspiracy members.
7. Discussion
The Surrey Six gang murder blowout case gave us a unique opportunity to explore the effects of a period of crisis on a criminal organization. The comparison between the pre-murder and the post-murder network helped us assess different hypotheses testing the cohesion of organizations and the centrality of individuals during crises.
Our study results showed that the Surrey Six Murder network followed many of the patterns found in legal organizations (see
Tutzauer 1985;
Uddin et al. 2010;
Hossain et al. 2013). The level of fragmentation and network size increased post-murder, while the network’s density and centralization decreased. These results suggested that individuals sought to increase their connections, but these new connections were not to the core conspiracy members.
We did observe network changes after the Surrey Six Murder, but the adjustments were different from the retrenchment phases that occurred in major organizations like the Italian Mafia (
Paoli 2007), American biker gangs (
Quinn 2001), or Al-Qaeda (
Ouellet et al. 2017). Similar to what Ouellet and colleagues observed for terrorist groups like the Toronto 18 (
Ouellet and Bouchard 2018), the network showed signs of fragmentation after the crisis. In addition, the role of the leaders (Le and Bacon) was diminished after the murder, something that was also observed in prior studies (
Morselli and Petit 2007). This was also true of most other core conspiracy members who experienced slight decreases in betweenness centrality. Cody Haevischer was the only core conspiracy member whose centrality increased after the murder.
Analyses of tie quality and control provided insights on potential reasons for why the Surrey Six Murder network did not experience a sort of retrenchment phase around core members. The pre-murder network comprised a high percentage of business ties, but a low level of trust and control, especially within the core conspiracy members group. After the murder, the proportion of trust ties increased along with the number of positive and balanced cliques. These results supported prior research that suggested that strong ties are particularly effective when a group faces uncertainty and crisis (
Krackhardt 1992), thus needing to reinforce obligations and social norms (
Coleman 1988). In the same way, intensifying the level of control over individuals and information flow is essential when the group is threatened (
Argote et al. 1989;
Hossain et al. 2013), which is especially relevant in the case of organized crime (
Paoli 2002).
The increase in trust and control that characterized the post-murder network could be linked to the increase in the network’s fragmentation and size.
Paoli (
2008a,
2008b) argued that criminal organizations that implemented the retrenchment strategy were built on a high level of trust and solidarity shared by all members. The meso-level analysis of dyadic relationships showed that the Red Scorpion core conspiracy group was built mainly on business and conflict ties, while the trust relationships in the pre-murder network linked mostly core members to nodes who were external to the group. The positive cliques that did exist involved mostly nodes who were external to the conspiracy. This network configuration was even clearer in the post-murder network, where we observed the addition of new trust relationships that connected the core members to nodes who were not present before the murder.
The most lasting and stable organized crime groups are typically founded on pre-existing trust ties and collective shared identity (
Paoli 2002,
2007). It could be that the low levels of trust found in the Red Scorpions made room for family members and other trusted ties to join in, post-murder, as a currency that was scarce yet needed in times of crisis. Criminal organizations need to balance efficiency and security (
Calderoni 2012;
Morselli 2009), but they may not always search for that balance unless circumstances force them to.
The study has some limitations that are necessary to discuss. One of the main problems is missing data, as the study only includes those who were mentioned in the Surrey Six Judgment. Some individuals who were either not involved in the law enforcement investigation or included in the judicial decision may be missing. The missing data can impact all the network indices. For instance, trust ties may be more present than the court documents show. A concern related to node centrality is that the judgment is centered on the trial of two individuals, Cody Haevischer and Matthew Johnston. Thus, Haevischer and Johnston’s high centrality scores may be due to the fact that they were central in the judgment. Indeed, we examined the Surrey Six conspiracy network from the point of view of two of its most central players, not the Red Scorpion network as a whole. The scientific literature on crises within criminal organizations has often analyzed changes that occurred within the organization at large, which could explain why our results sometimes diverged. As with all court data, the information included in the judgment could lack objectivity because it was mostly based on witnesses’ declarations and law enforcement’s recollection of the events. Thus, only the declarations that have been considered reliable by the court were included in the analysis. A further factor that might have influenced the RS network changes is the non-typical merger between the two gangs that occurred a few months before the murder. Because of the merger, the organization was potentially more exposed to fragmentation than longstanding, ethnically homogenous, and well-structured criminal organizations.
When dealing with court records and police investigations,
Campana and Varese (
2012) suggested performing external validity checks by means, for instance, of interviews with key informants and other open source records.
Rostami and Mondani’s (
2015) study showed that different data sources related to the same study object have a fundamental impact on the network results. Although we were able to find numerous written materials on the case, interviews with key participants would have helped provide further context on specific relationships included in the network, including potentially missing ones. Finally, the study of the Red Scorpions, as an organization, was limited to a very specific time frame. We did not have access to specific data on the evolution of the group post-crisis, nor was it the aim of the study. That said, there is some evidence to suggest that the organization suffered after many of their leaders were arrested and charged in major police operations in the years following the Surrey Six Murder. Yet more than 10 years after the post-murder phase we analyzed in this study, the Red Scorpions was still an active gang in BC (e.g.,
Bolan 2019).
Despite these limitations, the Surrey Six Murder represented a unique opportunity to study organized crime groups during crises from a network perspective. Rather than a retrenchment phase taking place after the murder, the network expanded in size, leading to decreased cohesion. Leaders became less central as trusted connections integrated the network. This sort of adjustment—reduced importance of leaders—is not in and of itself a negative outcome for the group. When trust is not in short supply, criminal leaders can afford to position themselves on the periphery of conspiracy networks, as heavy involvement is simply not required –trust among participants removes much of the need for control (
Calderoni 2012). Trust was lacking prior to the Surrey Six murder, making it the most pressing need to address post-crisis. To our knowledge, no studies have measured the impact that a lack of trust and control can have on a criminal organization and its survival. The survival of criminal organizations depends on a variety of factors that are not necessarily linear; small groups survive longer when they forge alliances with outsiders, but larger groups benefit more when they strive to keep alliances within (
Ouellet et al. 2019). Achieving proper balance between efficiency (and profit-making) and security, between waging wars over turf or sharing turf, are some of the most consequential—yet understudied—decisions made by gang leaders.