Emergence, survival, and segregation of competing gangs.

In this paper, we approach the phenomenon of criminal activity from an infectious perspective by using tailored compartmental agent-based models that include the social flavor of the mechanisms governing the evolution of crime in society. Specifically, we focus on addressing how the existence of competing gangs shapes the penetration of crime. The mean-field analysis of the model proves that the introduction of dynamical rules favoring the simultaneous survival of both gangs reduces the overall number of criminals across the population as a result of the competition between them.

Fear induced explosive transitions in the dynamics of corruption.

In this article, we analyze a compartmental model aimed at mimicking the role of imitation and delation of corruption in social systems. In particular, the model relies on a compartmental dynamics in which individuals can transit between three states: honesty, corruption, and ostracism. We model the transitions from honesty to corruption and from corruption to ostracism as pairwise interactions.

Norm violation versus punishment risk in a social model of corruption.

We analyze the onset of social-norm-violating behaviors when social punishment is present. To this aim, a compartmental model is introduced to illustrate the flows among the three possible states: honest, corrupt, and ostracism. With this simple model we attempt to capture some essential ingredients such as the contagion of corrupt behaviors to honest agents, the delation of corrupt individuals by honest ones, and the warning to wrongdoers (fear like that triggers the conversion of corrupt people into honesty).