Reducing Gun Violence: Results from an Intervention in East Los Angeles

Geographical influences of an emerging network of gang rivalries

“…This model simulates the mobility of gang members and the resulting interactions. We compare the resulting simulated network to the gang rivalry network observed in the eastern Los Angeles division of Hollenbeck [64,50]. In Section 2, we outline the proposed model.…”

“…Certain properties of Hollenbeck make it accessible to modeling the gang rivalry networks outlined in [64,50]. First, it is a closed system in that the gang activity within Hollenbeck is generally isolated from gang activity outside of Hollenbeck.…”

“…Hollenbeck is about 39.4 km 2 [50,64]. In our implementation, one Hollenbeck city block corresponds to approximately six grid elements.…”

“…It encompasses an area of roughly 39.4 km 2 . Hollenbeck is home to approximately twenty-nine active gangs with sixty-nine rivalries among them [50,64]. The set spaces for the gangs and the corresponding observed rivalry network are displayed in Figure 1, as given in [50].…”

“…Further, street gang members typically have locations, known as set spaces, where they spend large quantities of time [62,47]. It is therefore reasonable to think of each gang as a node embedded in Euclidean space [50,64]. Within this framework, the existence of persistent violence between two gangs becomes an edge connecting two nodes.…”