research overview
- David Pyrooz is a criminologist. He received his PhD from Arizona State University in 2012 and joined the sociology faculty in 2015. He also works in the Institute of Behavioral Science's Prevention Science Program. He is interested why people violate laws, norms, and rules, what happens to them when they do, and ways to increase safety and justice in our communities. Most of his research is aimed at the criminology of social groups, particularly gangs. He studies how and why people organize themselves into groups, the criminal and non-criminal consequences of these groups for individuals and communities, and the legal and non-governmental responses to them. His current research projects involve advancing the science of gang intervention in the Denver area. He is the Principal Investigator on a randomized controlled trial that uses a family-based intervention to improve the livelihoods of youth on pretrial or probation supervision in the 2nd, 17th, and 18th judicial districts of Colorado. He is also the Principal Investigator evaluating Aurora SAVE, which uses a focused deterrence strategy to reduce gun violence among young people involved in gangs and groups. He recently completed a randomized controlled trial with the City and County of Denver's Office of Community Violence Solutions, which used multidisciplinary teams and street outreach workers to promote disengagement from gangs and desistance from crime. The six books he has authored or edited include On Gangs (Temple University Press, 2022) and Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons (Cambridge University Press, 2019), the latter of which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He has written opinion editorials that have appeared in outlets such as the Denver Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. In 2016 he received the Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology.
