Harron's study opens with a definitional question about Haiti's armed groups: is the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies a gang at all? The answer offered is no, and everything else follows from it.

Applying the Terrorism and Extremism Matrix devised by Kelshall and Archutowski, the analysis works through G9's structure, its motives and aims, how much violence it can generate, the justification it gives for that violence, and how openly it operates. On each measure the group sits across categories, drawing on street gangs, on organised crime and on terrorist organisations without reducing to any of them.

Harron proposes a new label, a hybrid type of violent actor, and argues that classifying it correctly has practical consequences: policing and policy tailored to this specific case stand a better chance of containing and disrupting the group than instruments designed for gangs.