Malcolm Klein, the former director of the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Southern California and professor emeritus is one of the most well known gang researchers in the United States, and perhaps the world.
This is one of the most cited books pertaining to gangs.
Malcolm Klein and has been publishing on the topic of gangs, crime, and juvenile delinquency for over 30 years.
He believes a gang may contain a core group, but many more are made up of fringe members, he asserts, and there is overlap among gangs. A large number of gangs have a criminal orientation, and their crimes have traditionally been against property. Gangs' major activity, according to the author, has been inactivity. But in recent times, the number of street gangs has grown enormously, he shows, with gangs now found in at least 800 American cities, their growth abetted by media attention and inept law enforcement officials. But as the gang culture has spread across the nation, the seriousness of its crimes has increased, with hundreds of homicides yearly in L.A. alone. Though written by a scholar who has studied street gangs for 30 years, this telling commentary is generally free of academic jargon.
Softback: 288 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995
ISBN: 0195115732
