Malcolm W. Klein
Malcolm Klein (born September 4, 1930) is a criminologist, researcher, theorist, retired professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, and the author of his book The American Street Gang. In addition, he continued to publish eighteen other books and more than fifty articles that are based on his research on gangs. Throughout the forty years of his research in gangs, he primarily focused on its structures, processes, and their intervention strategies. He was the founder of the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Southern California in 1972 and furthered his agenda in research of gangs. He also began developing gang prevention and intervention strategies, which are promoted by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (Department of Justice) and the Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration (Department of Health Education and Welfare). But he took his research further than the city of Los Angeles. He introduced cross-national research, stretching all the way to Europe. He began this process his extension of comparative criminology by organizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Advanced Research Workshop and later the first Eurogang Workshop in Schmitten, Germany. Klein is best known for his research and understanding of how gangs function and its prevention.