Community self-organization in the face of dark networks

Most of the empirical work on community self-organization is based on ‘positive’ self-organization. Citizen initiatives, social enterprises, cooperative movements, community-based initiatives are all forms in which society... [ view full abstract ]

Most of the empirical work on community self-organization is based on ‘positive’ self-organization. Citizen initiatives, social enterprises, cooperative movements, community-based initiatives are all forms in which society is involved in the design and delivery of public services (Edelenbos, van Meerkerk, & Schenk, 2016; Pestoff, Brandsen, & Verschuere, 2012). For example, there are many community-based initiatives focused on increasing social cohesion, fighting poverty and energy saving. This is self-organization aimed at creating public value. There is a vast amount of knowledge about those practices and the dynamics of these networks, including the role of government, are well studied.
But how does it work in the context of ‘dark’ self-organization: organized crime? Actually, criminals can be perceived as experts in self-organization. In some criminal domains there are many well-organized networks, with strong ties between members but also able to quickly change form when the circumstances change.
The development of these dark networks has proven to be a major collaborative challenge for the government. In terms of strategy, there might be similar challenges for governments dealing with ‘good and ‘dark’ networks. The approach in the justice and policing domain has been mostly repressive and top-down. Even the idea of ‘community policing’ is still very much top-down organized. However, this often ends in convictions for the ‘lower ranked’ criminals, while the networks themselves stay intact. In practice, this leads to problem areas and domains in which organized crime is very well embedded and even undermining legal structures.
Recently they are exploring the opportunities of stimulating positive community self-organization. The government is trying to work together in networks, also by stimulating community and economic self-organization, to be more effective in fighting dark networks. Government is reinventing itself in this domain in the face of dark networks. This research focuses on this development of fighting dark networks with networks.
It is an empirical paper, drawing on a recent case study on the role of ‘stadsmariniers’ (city marines) in the city of Rotterdam. Their approach consists of building networks, including public-private partnerships, to undermine organized crime in specific areas. The data is collected by local, in-depth action research. By following closely how the ‘stadsmarinier’ works, uses strategies to fight organized dark networks and mobilizes local ‘positive networks’. Our results shows how this network approach leads to different results and successes then the traditional, top-down repressive approach.
The conceptual focus of this paper is time. A top-down, repressive approach is reactive and is based on a linear concept of solving cases. But a bottom-up, network approach requires more of the timing of interventions: when can interventions have the most impact, at what speed can results be made, and how is long term-change achieved by stimulating a sustainable, self-organized community?
Therefore, this paper also contributes to new conceptualizations in the field of community self-organization. Despite this not being an international comparison, we think it would be a contribution to the research field of community self-organization to study this from this angle.