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. In his research, he looked at gangs in another point of view that past theorists and researchers did not look at before. He created the connections between different variables of gangs, thus allowing other researchers to look further into the issue of delinquency of gangs. Furthermore, he contributed to comparative criminology by bringing his research into a global perspective. His contributions allowed him to be honored with the August Vollmer Award not only for his research, but also for his "justice or to the treatment or prevention of criminal or delinquent behavior."