'Super-connected' teenagers key to tackling violent crime, study suggests

'Super-connected' teenagers key to tackling violent crime, study suggests Lisa Lock Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Lead Editor Young people with the most connections to other suspected offenders of any age are almost five times more likely to carry knives than the average youth suspect, according to a new analysis of more than 200,000 U.K. police records. This top 5% of "super-connected" children aged 10–18 are almost three times more likely to commit violent crime, seven times more likely to commit robberies and nine times more likely to be involved in organized crime than the wider youth suspect population. The research by the University of Cambridge's Violence Research Center also found that super-connected young people were far more likely to become victims of knife violence themselves. In fact, nearly 60% of young victims of knife-related injury were suspects in another offense. The team behind the study say that statistically mapping co-offender data from across police databases can reveal the young people more likely to be responsible for the most serious violent crime—as well as those most likely to be victimized. This approach could lead to a new "scoring system," they argue, enabling police and social services to prioritize targeted intervention programs for those teenagers in the highest-risk criminal environments who are most likely to act violently. "Traditional approaches treat young offenders in isolation, focusing on individual risk factors such as age, background and previous behavior," said Prof Paolo Campana, lead author from Cambridge's Institute of Criminology. "In reality, we are missing a crucial layer, as youth violence is deeply social, driven by relationships and peer groups. "Mapping co-offender networks using police records could help agencies identify and engage with young people at greatest risk of inflicting violence and becoming victims. "Intervening when young people first become embedded in criminal networks, regardless of the seriousness of the initial offense, could prevent loss of life down the line," Campana said. The research used records from Cambridgeshire Constabulary, which covers cities such as Peterborough and Cambridge, as well as several large towns where county lines gangs have operated, between March 2018 and October 2021. Researchers say their study should be replicated using data from the U.K.'s major urban areas, but believe the "underlying dynamics" will be the same, as the Cambridgeshire findings match those from studies on U.S. cities using these techniques. Each police-recorded crime event includes details of the incident with suspects and victims. A connection in the network map is created when two individuals are both recorded as suspects in the same crime incident. For each additional co-suspect in a young person's overall criminal record, the likelihood of violent crime increases by around 30%, and for knife violence by 19%. In turn, each co-suspect connection increases the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence by 7%, and of knife-related injury by 11%. Most young people suspected of an offense have between one and three connections to other criminal suspects of any age. Those in the top 5% typically have more than seven, with 21 connections the maximum recorded. In the study database of Cambridgeshire records, more than 10,000 young people were recorded as victims of a crime, and some 6,000 were suspects. Nearly 1 in 4 young victims had also been identified as a suspect in a separate offense. Campana, who conducted the work with Cambridge's Dr. Noemi Corsini and Dr. Cecilia Meneghini at the University of Exeter, says co-offender data can be used to flag teenagers for early interventions in other ways. If they are embedded in networks with several adult co-offenders, for example. The data could also help track the success of any interventions by charting displacement from within a crime network. "Understanding where a young person sits within a crime network, and who they are connected to, should inform how and when we intervene. That means building the capacity to map and share network intelligence across police, youth services, schools and community organizations in a responsible way," added Campana. "Violence does not happen in isolation, and tackling youth violence means tackling the networks that sustain it." Publication details Report: Breaking Networks of Youth Serious Violence Journal information: Journal of Phycology Provided by University of Cambridge