James C. (Buddy) Howell, Ph.D., worked at the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in the U.S. Department of Justice for 21 years, mostly as Director of Research and Program Development. He also served as Deputy Administrator of OJJDP. He currently is Senior Research Associate with the National Gang Center in Tallahassee, Florida, where he has researched gangs for the past 15 years. He has published 40 works on youth and street gangs, and a similar number on juvenile justice and youth violence, including 3 books. One of which, Preventing and Reducing Juvenile Delinquency (SAGE) is now in its second edition. Some of his published works have appeared in Crime… & Delinquency (SAGE), Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (SAGE), and Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice (SAGE). Dr. Howell is very active in helping States and localities reform their juvenile justice system and employ evidence-based programs, and in working with these entities in addressing gang problems in a research-based, data-driven, and balanced approach.
Dr. Elizabeth Griffiths is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark. nbsp; After completing her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Toronto, she joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at Emory University before moving to Rutgers in 2011. nbsp; She is also a former pre-doctoral fellow of the National Consortium on Violence Research and a former Junior Fellow of the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto. Her research spans multiple substantive and methodological areas, including communities and crime, spatial diffusion of violence, temporal trends in homicide, the emergence of gang in places, the transformation of public… housing, youth crime and the code of the street, the efficacy of drug free zones, and victimization risk among others.