After nearly four decades of growth, the number of people held in U.S. prisons has begun to decline. In an era of decarceration, social scientists need to understand prisoner reentry experiences. Longitudinal studies are one strategy to accomplish this goal. Yet, the retention of a formerly incarcerated population across waves of interviews is…

The researcher conducted a quantitative research study to determine the perceptions of two groups of selected school personnel (principals or assistant principals and counselors or teachers) regarding gang presence in the fifth-grade population of elementary schools in a large urban school district in North Texas. The researcher examined and…

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study (Moustakas, 1994) was to describe the experiences that single Hispanic mothers of gang-affiliated male juveniles face during their sons' reentry process after being released from a Texas Juvenile Justice Department state facility. Methods: After an extensive review of…

Objective: This study assessed the effectiveness of an adapted Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) intervention for gang-affiliated Mexican American adolescents and their parents. Methods: A total of 200 adolescents and their family caregivers were randomized to either a treatment or a control condition. Outcomes included adolescent substance…

During the 2004-2005 school year, Austin Independent School District (AISD) received a total federal Title IV grant of $477,413 that was used to support substance use and violence prevention efforts at each level of the AISD Student Intervention Model.

This article discerns the role that Mexican American gang members play in drug markets, and the relationship between gang members' drug use and drug selling in South Texas. A four-part typology based on the two dimensions of gang type and gang member emerged from this qualitative analysis of 160 male gang members: Homeboys, Hustlers, Slangers, and…

Prior research on violent crime by female offenders is reviewed. A Texas female prisoner sample is used to explore specific questions raised by the literature review. Violent and nonviolent offenders were compared, looking specifically at race, socioeconomic status, having been raised in single-parent homes, criminal history, gang membership,…

For many decades communities have been troubled by the criminal activities of youth gangs. This report looks at almost 30 years of information collected on gang problems in nearly 4,000 communities. The number of localities reporting gang problems increased between the 1970s and the 1990s, representing a tenfold increase in the number of cities…

Studies of Mexican Americans, the third largest minority group, have resulted in an effort to understand them as well as to provide opportunity of exploring whether new trends have appeared among Mexican Americans. This fast-growing group has had a profound effect in settling the Southwest and has been the product of prejudice and discrimination…