David Pyrooz, PhD

David Pyrooz received his PhD from Arizona State University in 2012 and joined the sociology faculty in 2015. 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. He has been the principal or co-principal investigator on $4.5m in funding from private or government agencies to conduct basic and applied research (see below). His current research projects involve advancing the science of gang intervention in the Denver area and beyond. He has authored or edited six books, including 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. He serves on the editorial boards of eight refereed journals, including Criminology, as well as a board member for the Institute of Behavioral Science.