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…

School safety is a priority for school administrators and policy makers as they seek strategies to provide an environment conducive to learning. Beyond preventing crime, schools must contend with social disturbances that may not rise to the level of criminal activity, but can negatively affect students, teachers, and the school environment. One…

Gang affiliation is not something that students leave behind when they come to school. Gang members do not leave their behaviors, attitudes, and conflicts outside the school environment. Gangs, unchecked and unidentified in a school setting, often engage in threat and intimidation; physical and cyber bullying; fighting; recruiting; and criminal…

The goal of this study was to understand whether ethnic pride among young, incarcerated Black and Latino men was associated with successful community reentry. We interviewed 397 Black and Latino men 16 to 18 years old in a New York City jail and then again 1 year after their release to determine the relationship between participants' sense of…

This study investigates the effect of the threat of legal sanctions on intentions to commit three types of offenses with a representative sample of 744 officially adjudicated youth with varying histories of offenses and gang involvement. In a departure from previous research, the authors find small severity effects for property crimes that are not…

Interventions aimed at preventing the important problem of gun injuries could be improved with an understanding of whether there are unique factors that place individuals at an increased risk of gun victimization. Much remains to be known about the victims of gun violence. The purpose of this article is to assess whether there are individual-level…

The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a gang- and delinquency-prevention program delivered by law enforcement officers within a school setting. Originally designed in 1991 by Phoenix-area law enforcement agencies to address local needs, the program quickly spread across the United States. In this article, we describe…

A comparison of the characteristics of 337 Canadian adult female gang offenders with a matched sample of women offenders showed that they were more likely to have been sentenced for violent offenses, had a greater number of prior youth and criminal convictions, and served prior terms of incarceration. Gang members were also assessed as having…

The Virginia Board of Education's "Student Conduct Policy Guidelines" were first developed in 1994 in response to action by the 1993 General Assembly requiring the Virginia Board of Education to establish such guidelines. In 2004, the "Guidelines" underwent a major revision in response to requirements of § 22.1-279.6. of the…

This report presents findings from the 2007 National Youth Gang Survey. Data on the number of gangs, gang members, and gang-related homicides in larger cities, suburban counties, smaller cities, and rural counties are provided to accurately reflect youth gang activity in the United States. Based on survey results, it is estimated that nearly 3,550…

This study examines the process of change within law enforcement, focusing on the leadership, learning, and organizational change required to reduce crime, violence, and social disruption caused by criminal street gangs. The study tests the viability, results, and implications of a new policing model, the trans-jurisdictional task force, through…

This article traces the historical coverage of the gender issue in the criminological literature. It also provides contemporary empirical evidence about differences and similarities between girls and boys with respect to juvenile crime and to processing by the juvenile justice system, by analyzing several national juvenile crime data series, all…

Strategies to enhance prosecution of gang-related crimes are presented, with a focus on enforcement and prosecution targeting urban street gangs. The model programs introduced offer strategies largely based on the practical experiences of agencies that participated in a demonstration program, the Urban Street Gang Drug Trafficking Enforcement…

Since 1995, the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) has surveyed law enforcement agencies across the nation about youth gang activity. Because tribal police departments were not included in earlier surveys, however, youth gang activities in Indian country have been largely absent from survey findings. This Bulletin describes the nature and makeup…

This paper describes how one Texas school district, the Aldine Independent School District (ISD), created its own police department as an effort to control school-related crime. Formed in 1990, the Aldine Police Department (ADP) entitles officers to issue citations to students or make arrests according to their assessment of the situation and with…