The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society

David Pyrooz is Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of four books, including On Gangs and Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons, the latter of which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.James Densley is Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University. Densley is the author of eight books, including How Gangs Work and On Gangs; more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals; and over 100 book chapters, essays, and other works in outlets such as Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. John Leverso is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati in the School of Criminal Justice. He is a sociological criminologist whose research investigates the urban street gang and later life consequences of justice involvement focusing on race/ethnicity, gender, andinteractions on the digital street.

The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society is the premier reference book on gangs for practitioners, policymakers, students, and scholars. This carefully curated volume contains 43 chapters written by the leading experts in the field, who advance a central theme of "looking back, moving forward" by providing state-of-the-art reviews of the literature they created, shaped, and (re)defined. This international, interdisciplinary collective of authors provides readers with a rare tour of the field in its entirety, expertly navigating thorny debates and the at-times contentious history of gang research, while simultaneously synthesizing flourishing areas of study that advance the field into the 21st century.

1. Introduction to the OUP Handbook of Gangs and Society