Global Gangs is "both highly authoritative and very timely."

Review of the edited collection by Jennifer M. Hazen and Dennis Rodgers in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books (Rutgers).

Global Gangs (Jennifer M. Hazen and Dennis Rodgers)This book is both highly authoritative and very timely. Dennis Rodgers, an accomplished gang analyst in international circles, and Jennifer Hazen, an armed group expert, assembled an impressive group of scholars who had researched gangs in various national contexts for original contributions to this volume. In fact, this book grew out of a workshop that the authors convened on the matter of similarities and differences in gang studies in May 2009 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. For purposes of discussions at the workshop, and in the interest of promoting cross-cultural comparisons, Rodgers and Hazen invited participants to adopt a broad approach to the gang phenomenon and to base their contributions to this book on a common definition of gangs. This general definition, consisting of three primary criteria, is that “a gang will (1) display a measure of institutional continuity independent of its membership; (2) routinely engage in violent behavior patterns that are considered illegal by the dominant authorities and mainstream society; and (3) consist of members who are principally, though not necessarily only, under the age of twenty-five” (Rodgers and Hazen, this volume, p. 8). We reference these gang forms generally as gangs in this review.

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Published in: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books (Rutgers)
By: James C. Howell