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The goal of this Special Issue is to examine the diverse nature of gang-related violence in modern life by providing insights into the growing complexities to better direct public policy solutions in the 21st Century. Multiple perspectives and analytical techniques (eg, quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods), across the United States and globally, are necessary to unpack the dynamic nature of gang-related violence today. Work on this Special Issue began just prior to COVID-19 upending the world and with it everyone’s daily routines. We would like to thank first and foremost all of the contributors to this Special Issue. Despite the exceptionally challenging life circumstances, each article in this Special Issue highlights novel research methodologies to better understand gang violence and potential interventions to reduce it.

As the patterns of daily life changed with COVID-19 (ie, quarantines, social distancing, etc.), researchers were frantic to understand how these changes to routine activities impacted all types of crime, from domestic violence (Nix and Richards 2021), to organized crime (De la Miyar et al. 2021), to cybercrime (Hawdon et al. 2020), and everything in between (Halford et al. 2020; Mohler et al. 2020; Rosenfeld and Lopez 2020). Studies generally show that crime patterns varied by the particular type of crime (eg, theft, robbery, domestic violence, homicide, etc.) suggesting that the changes in the mobility patterns of offenders and victims directly contributes to these trends (Halford et al. 2020). Yet, emerging studies reveal that gang-related violence either remained stable (Brantingham et al. 2021) or increased (Kim and Phillips 2021 …