Preventing Youth Gang Joining and Facilitating Desistance

Abstract

In 2006, Malcolm Klein and Cheryl Maxson published a fantastic book highlighting the current state of the field regarding youth gang research and practice. Although it is a few years old now, it is an incredible resource. The authors make the case that research and policy are intertwined, and we—as scholars and policy makers—must understand the linkages between the two if we are to make important inroads in reducing youth gangs and their criminal activity. In their book, Klein and Maxson document recent patterns of youth gang membership and activities, present an overview of the research why these patterns exist, assess a number of popular antigang strategies, and provide a series of theoretically driven, empirically supported policy recommendations for antigang efforts to be pursued in the future. My hope in designing this special issue is that readers keep the interconnectedness of these topical areas in mind when assessing each article and the overarching themes. In short, I have asked each of the authors of the current studies to answer not just, ‘‘What did you do in your study?’’ and ‘‘What did you find?’’ but also focus on ‘‘What should we do with this new information?’’ In this vein, each of the authors included in this special issue have spent considerable effort in tying their study into the broader research on youth gang theory and policy. More specifically, the purpose of this special issue was to tackle two topics important to the field of youth gangs. On one hand, scholars should (and have) devoted considerable efforts during the past several decades to understanding why some youth join gangs while others do not, even when they are faced with similar social settings and opportunities. In short, much of the research during the past few decades has focused on how individual differences affect youth gang joining. While these studies have, in many ways, taken a departure from earlier gang research on group processes, such examinations have also provided considerable information relevant to evidence-based prevention practices (i.e., those designed to keep youth from becoming gang members) that focus on individual change strategies, which have grown increasingly popular among practitioners. I strongly encourage readers to explore Klein and Maxson’s (2006) work as they comprehensively and elegantly tackle both the strengths and the weaknesses of such approaches.