Administrators and frontline workers in correctional centers and in the community search for effective gang prevention and intervention programs. To this aim, semistructured interviews with 175 male and female adult (ex) gang members in correctional centers and community corrections exploring a range of topics were conducted. Presented here is an overview of the childhood experiences of the sample, gang experiences, and prevention and intervention strategies identified as helpful by participants. Street-prison gang connections and the impact of gang desistance are explored, as is the influence of local context on the types of gangs and the implications for programming.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.