David C. Brotherton Globalization and the gang

The Vera Institute of Justice's Neil A. Weiner Research Speaker Series features David C. Brotherton, professor and chair of the sociology department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, CUNY. In this podcast, Brotherton discusses an alternative view of gangs in the era of globalization. While police and domestic security agencies have characterized gangs as international criminal groups that present a grave threat to national security, Brotherton argues that there is no social scientific evidence to support that perspective. He describes his cross-cultural and transnational research on 21st-century gangs and his findings that, contrary to decades of social scientific assumptions about their antisocial nature, gangs around the world are engaged in movements for political and social change.