A Statute-Centered Analysis of Anti-Gang Law Design

Since California’s 1988 Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act, anti-gang laws have spread rapidly across the U.S. Currently, all fifty states have enacted anti-gang legislation.  Yet, we still lack a systematic, reproducible method for measuring what these laws authorize and how their governing logic varies across jurisdictions. Criminologist Angela Zorro Medina will create and analyze a statute-level dataset of state anti-gang legislation enacted from 1988 to 2024. She will compile data from the National Gang Center’s inventory and state legislative databases for her study.