Chasing After Street Gangs: A Forty-Year Journey (Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice) - Softcover

This book is classic Klein: engaging, thoughtful, and at times irreverent. If you are interested in gaining an appreciation for the current state of youth gang research and policy, I recommend this user-friendly monograph. Mac (as Klein is known) shares forty-plus years of scholarly research in a very readable format. For readers who have not had the pleasure of meeting Mac in person, this book will give you some insight into his humor along with his wisdom. (Finn-Aage Esbensen, University of Missouri-St. Louis)

This book reveals the remarkable career in gang research of Mac Klein. Told in his typically engaging style, he takes the reader on his journey through the twists and turns of charting what we know (and don't know)

Klein is the leading gang scholar (the gang guru. Chasing After Street Gangs summarizes his wealth of gang knowledge and is very clear on where we need to focus our energies in tackling the gang problem.)

In this brief, accessible text, Malcolm Klein presents insights gained from his forty years of experience investigating street gangs. In Part I he reveals some of the dominant trends that have emerged over the course of his research, defining and describing gangs, their locations, who joins them, and the types of illegal behavior in which they engage. In Part II he delves into the conceptual contexts that help us to understand those trends, examining gangs in relation to other small groups, comparing gangs in the U.S. to those in Europe, and discussing approaches to gang control.

About the Series

Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice provides essential knowledge on important contemporary matters of crime, law, and justice to a broad audience of readers. Each volume is written by a leading scholar in that area. Concise, accessible, and affordable, these texts are designed to serve either as primers around which courses can be built or as supplemental books for a variety of courses.