For generations, scholars, law enforcement personnel, politicians and the media have tried to understand and explain youth gangs and violence. This insightful collection contains the work of leading scholars, integrating previously published articles with new material to provide the most comprehensive information about the status of American youth gangs. The topics are grouped in four sections: The first section explores the issues and ramifications of current terminology and survey information. In the second section, nontraditional gangs, such as female gangs and hybrid gangs, are disucssed. The third section attempts to examine gang activities objectively and place them in a proper perspective. The final section looks at historical and current response techniques to youth gangs, such as suppression, prevention and legal injunctions.

Gangs in America's Communities, Third Edition blends theory with current research to help you identify essential features associated with youth violence and gangs, as well as apply strategies for gang control and prevention. Authors Dr. James C. Howell and Dr. Elizabeth Griffiths introduce you to theories of gang formation, illustrate various ways of defining and classifying gangs, and discuss national trends in gang presence and gang-related violence across American cities. They also offer evidence-based strategies for positioning communities to prevent, intervene, and address gang activity. New to the Third Edition: A series of new case studies document the evolution of numerous gangs in large cities, including the community aspect, evolutionary nature, and how cities influence levels of violence. New discussions highlighting the role of social media, insights into how gangs use it to recruit members, and the response from law enforcement. Current nationwide gang trends are discussed to encourage you to analyze and interpret the most recent statistics for which representative data is available. Updated macro and micro gang theories enable you to explore a recent encapsulation of leading developmental models. New discussions around female gang members offer you potentially effective programs for discouraging females from joining gangs—along with highly regarded delinquency prevention and reduction programs that have the potency to be effective in reducing gang crimes among young women. A comprehensive gang prevention, intervention, and suppression program in Multnomah County, Oregon shows how theory was successfully applied to reduce gang activity in a local community. New research on “gang structures” and their rates of crime illustrate the connections between violent crimes and the amount of violent offenders within a gang. Additional discussion of distinguishing features (e.g., typologies) of major gangs, and numerous examples of gang symbols, tattoos, and graffiti has been added to help readers identify and differentiate various types of gangs.

Although a range of program and policy responses to youth gangs exist, most are largely based on suppression, implemented by the police or other criminal justice agencies. Less attention and fewer resources have been directed to prevention and intervention strategies that draw on the participation of community organizations, schools, and social service agencies in the neighborhoods in which gangs operate. Also underemphasized is the importance of integrating such approaches at the local level. In this volume, leading researchers discuss effective intervention among youth gangs, focusing on the ideas behind, approaches to, and evidence about the effectiveness of community-based, youth gang interventions. Treating community as a crucial unit of analysis and action, these essays reorient our understanding of gangs and the measures undertaken to defeat them. They emphasize the importance of community, both as a context that shapes opportunity and as a resource that promotes positive youth engagement. Covering key themes and debates, this book explores the role of social capital and collective efficacy in informing youth gang intervention and evaluation, the importance of focusing on youth development within the context of community opportunities and pressures, and the possibilities of better linking research, policy, and practice when responding to youth gangs, among other critical issues.

Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the past thirty years, as have the policy approaches to deal with it. During this time criminologists and other scholars have helped to shed light on the role of incarceration, prevention, drugs, guns, policing, and numerous other aspects to crime control. Yet the latest research is rarely heard in public discussions and is often missing from the desks of policymakers. This book accessibly summarizes the latest scientific information on the causes of crime and evidence about what does and does not work to control it. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new version of Crime and Public Policy will include twenty chapters and five new substantial entries. As with previous editions, each essay reviews the existing literature, discusses the methodological rigor of the studies, identifies what policies and programs the studies suggest, and then points to policies now implemented that fail to reflect the evidence. The chapters cover the principle institutions of the criminal justice system (juvenile justice, police, prisons, probation and parole, sentencing), how broader aspects of social life inhibit or encourage crime (biology, schools, families, communities), and topics currently generating a great deal of attention (criminal activities of gangs, sex offenders, prisoner reentry, changing crime rates). With contributions from trusted, leading scholars, Crime and Public Policy offers the most comprehensive and balanced guide to how the latest and best social science research informs the understanding of crime and its control for policymakers, community leaders, and students of crime and criminal justice.

State-of-the-art critical reviews of recent scholarship on the causes of juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice system responses, and public policies to prevent and reduce youth crime are brought together in a single volume authored by leading scholars and researchers in neuropsychology, developmental and social psychology, sociology, history, criminology/criminal justice, and law.

This book is the third publication from the Eurogang Network, a cross-national collaboration of researchers (from both North America and Europe) devoted to comparative and multi-national research on youth gangs. It provides a unique insight into the influence of migration on local gang formation and development, paying particular attention to the importance of ethnicity. The book also explores the challenges that migration and ethnicity pose for responding effectively to the growth of such gangs, particularly in areas where public discourse on such issues is restricted. Chapters in the book are concerned to address both situations where there have been longstanding problems with street gangs as well as areas where such issues have just started to emerge. A variety of different research traditions and approaches are represented, including ethnographic methods, self-report surveys and interviews, official records data and victim interviews. It will be essential reading for anybody interested in the phenomenon of street and youth gangs.

In the past two decades, many prevention and suppression programs have been initiated on a national and local level to combat street gangs--but what do we really know about them? Why do youths join them? Why do they proliferate? Street Gang Patterns and Policies is a crucial update and critical examination of our understanding of gangs and major gang-control programs across the nation. Often perceived solely as an urban issue, street gangs are also a suburban and rural dilemma. Klein and Maxson focus on gang proliferation, migration, and crime patterns, and highlight known risk factors that lead to youths form and join gangs within communities. Dispelling the long-standing assumptions that the public, the media, and law enforcement have about street gangs, they present a comprehensive overview of how gangs are organized and structured. The authors assess the major gang programs across the nation and argue that existing prevention, intervention, and suppression methods targeting individuals, groups, and communities, have been largely ineffective. Klein and Maxson close by offering valuable policy guidelines for practitioners on how to intervene and control gangs more successfully. Filling an important gap in the literature on street gangs and social control, this book is a must-read for criminologists, social workers, policy makers, and criminal justice practitioners.

This book offers a critical and empirical examination of gang life, using an intersectional framework considering race, class, gender, and other characteristics. The book reexamines mainstream definitions of gangs, identifies myths and misconceptions, and presents the complex subcultural or countercultural realities of gang members and their associates. Special attention is given to the importance of structural violence experienced by gang members and their communities. This book also interrogates how mainstream gang research is complicit in the oppression of marginalized individuals who join gangs. Assembling contributions from leading experts involved in gang research and the investigation of street gang culture, this book provides a perspective often missing in the conversation around gangs. Direct input from current and former gang members provides a window into the lived experiences of gang life—a picture more accurate and useful than that afforded by the privileged lens often used in gang research. Reliance on an intersectional approach fosters a non-pathological and critical look at gangs and their members. Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies is intended for students and scholars involved in the study of gangs, delinquency, and subcultural theory and will serve as a reference for researchers who wish to utilize a progressive, critical, and intersectional approach to study the impacts of gangs.

This timely, insightful, and data-led book fills a gap in gang scholarship by examining gangs in rural areas, specifically focusing on youth gang activity. Incorporating information from interviews with 96 active youth gang members and associates in three of the rural counties of California’s Central Valley, this book provides an in-depth look at youth involvement in gang life in rural settings and addresses the underlying factors leading to the socialization of rural youths into gang life. The book documents the family and school life of youths living in rural communities and examines the process by which they are initiated into gang activity. It discusses their roles in various street gang organizations and their gang-related and non- gang-related illegal activities. It traces their experiences within the criminal justice system, from initial contacts with the police to juvenile court and juvenile corrections. Besides extensive interviews with the youths and official records collected from local criminal justice agencies, data from more than 300 surveys of community members, accompanied by extensive field research in local communities, provides groundbreaking insights into a wide spectrum of issues related to gangs in rural settings. While the Central Valley of California serves as the research site for this extensive work, its findings are equally relevant to other rural areas in the United States and in the larger global context. This volume will be of pivotal interest to students, scholars, and academics in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, law, social sciences, and political sciences, as well as policymakers, criminal justice practitioners, community leaders, and advocates for gang prevention and intervention programs.