Danny Gascón received his MA and BA in Criminal Justice at California State University, San Bernardino, and earned his PhD in Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests lie at the intersection of urban criminology, law and society, and race and ethnic relations, and is principally concerned with critical approaches to the study of urban policing, punishment and inequality, and gang and youth culture. Danny currently teaches Criminology, Juvenile Justice, Policing, and the Sociology of Law.

His recent and forthcoming scholarly work focuses on the practices and products of legal institutions in various contexts. Danny’s dissertation, for instance, draws on more than five years of ethnographic research on police-community relations, and intracommunity racial conflicts in South Los Angeles. Other work includes qualitative examinations of intergang and interracial conflict in South Los Angeles, as well as labeling and the social constructions of race among inmates in California’s youth prison system, the Division of Juvenile Justice. Danny is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the Law and Society Association, the American Sociological Association, and the American Anthropological Association.