The Vollmer Award: The award honoring August Vollmer was first made in 1959. It is meant to recognize outstanding contributions to justice as well as scholarship and professional activity. I am honored to be the 2022 awardee because so many of the previous winners are individuals whose careers and work I have great respect for.Focus of My Remarks: This essay focuses on many failures in criminal justice policy and research. Costly though they may be, failures have the potential to teach us a good deal and we ignore them at our own peril.

The phrase attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "There is nothing permanent except change," is aptly applied to gangs and gang members. As this book has shown, transitions characterize the lives of prison gang members even in highly structured institutional settings. Gangs exert considerable influence on their members whether on the street or in prison. This influence can be measured in the involvement in crime and misconduct in prison, as well as in the disruption of many positive socializing forces such as employment, marriage, religion, and school. In the previous chapter, we examined the transition into gangs on the street and in prison. This chapter examines instances where gangs' control over individuals weakens and their members sever their ties to the group and transition out of gangs on the street and in prison.

There is a paucity of research comparing gang members and domestic extremists and extant studies find few explicit linkages. Despite this, there remains a great deal of interest in possible similarities between these criminal groups. Driving this interest is the possibility of adapting policies and practices aimed at preventing entry into criminal groups. A critical first step to determining compatibility is to examine the circumstances of the individuals who enter these organizations and better describe the entry processes. This study provides a unique comparison of entry into these groups by drawing on four broad empirically derived mechanisms of group entry using forty-five in-person interviews of U.S. gang members and thirty-eight life history narratives of individuals who radicalized in the United States. Our results reveal that each of the four conceptual categories appeared to influence initial involvement; however, no single mechanism described involvement in criminal groups or differentiated involvement across the gangs and extremist groups.

The present study examines the impact of Proponte Más, a family-based, multiple gated prevention program in Honduras. The primary goal of Proponte Más is to reduce the risk factors for problem behavior associated with youth in Honduras through family-based intervention services. At risk youth were randomly assigned to a treatment and control group. Data for the study were sourced primarily from the Behavior Measurement Instrument and FACES IV instrument given to study participants prior to and following programming. Our study finds that Proponte Más succeeded in improving family functioning and decreasing risk factors and increasing protective factors. Our findings pertaining to the impact of the program on delinquency, however, were mixed. Our findings suggest that RCTs and family-based interventions can be effectively carried out in the most violent and at-risk communities in the Western Hemisphere and can result in reduced risk and improved resiliency among at-risk youth.

Violence prevention efforts must take into consideration the potentially stigmatizing labels associated with violence, and how youth perceive different types of violence in their communities. Somali communities and individuals in North America have at times been labeled as at-risk for violence, with two notable examples being gang violence and ideologically motivated violence, or violent radicalization. Little is known, however, about how the youth themselves think about and understand these types of violence in their communities. In this article, we seek to answer the following questions: How do Somali immigrants think about violence in their communities, and the stigma related to this violence? and What are the implications of these perceptions/beliefs for violence prevention? Data are drawn from two qualitative studies conducted as part of an ongoing community-based participatory research (CBPR) collaboration between academic partners and Somali communities in three cities in North America. Study 1 consists of nine focus groups (n = 36, male only), and Study 2 consists of in-depth interviews (n = 40, male and female). All participants are Somali young adults living in North America. Overall, radicalization to violence is seen as a remote and irrelevant issue in the Somali community. Participants distance themselves from the idea of radicalization to violence and from those who participate in radical acts or held such beliefs. In contrast, gang involvement is characterized as a major problem for Somali communities, and a product of the marginalization associated with being a refugee in Canada or the United States. Findings suggest that prevention efforts focused on gangs are more likely to be acceptable to communities than those focused on violent extremism.

Chapter 13 Joining the Gang A Process of Supply and Demand James A. Densley, James A. DensleySearch for more papers by this author James A. Densley, James A. DensleySearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Scott H. Decker, Scott H. DeckerSearch for more papers by this authorDavid C. Pyrooz, David C. PyroozSearch for more papers by this author First published: 21 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118726822.ch13Citations: 16 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary This chapter outlines a demand-oriented approach to gang joining, wherein gangs are conceptualized as providers of goods and services not available in a market and gang members are conceptualized as consumers of said goods and services. Such a demand-oriented approach is predicated on a few assumptions. First, gangs cannot grow ad infinitum because they depend on finite resources such as territory. Second, gangs are not fully open to the public and much of the information concerning their business remains confined within the group. The chapter reviews the "state" of gang membership and existing criminological theories of gang joining in relation to risk factors and attractions that increase young people's propensity to join gangs. There are essentially four general theories of crime that best apply to gang involvement: criminal propensity/trait theory, social bond theory, strain theory, and social learning theory. Citing Literature The Handbook of Gangs RelatedInformation

Gang research has spanned nearly a century. In that time, we have learned that gang membership increases the chances of involvement in homicide as a victim or offender. The violence that embroils gang life, both instrumental and symbolic, often has consequences. In this paper we review the gang homicide literature covering topics such as definitional issues, available data, correlates and characteristics, and theoretical explanations. The review examines individual, group, and structural contexts for gang homicide. We conclude with a discussion of future needs in theory, data, and methods, to improve our understanding of gang homicide.

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 challenging due to their transient lifestyles and limited support systems, which may be further complicated by gang involvement. This article details the longitudinal follow-up procedures used in the LoneStar Project—a multiwave study of 802 males first interviewed in prison and reinterviewed twice in the year postrelease—to build rapport, complete interviews, and minimize attrition. We then evaluate the effectiveness of our procedures on important outcomes including interview yields, appointments, and incoming calls. Results indicate that any outgoing contact with respondents via appointment reminders and other reciprocal modes of contact lead to greater project engagement and a greater likelihood of interview completion. We conclude with relevant takeaways for researchers seeking to maximize survey participation with hard-to-reach populations.