• Age: 16
• Grade: 11

An expert takes us inside the dark world of gangs in Canada.

Dr. Mark Totten has spent fifteen years learning all about these gangs and the young men and women who belong to them. He has interviewed over 500 gang members across the country, traced their lives from infancy to adulthood, and explored the roots of their involvement in crime and their reliance on violence.

Nasty, Brutish and Short offers a groundbreaking picture of the reality of gangs in Canada. Much of what Dr. Totten has to say is at odds with popular ideas. His research leads him to believe that breaking through the circumstances that produce young criminals is far more difficult than most people think. For most individuals caught up in gang life, exiting that world is next to impossible -- in fact, the most common way out is an early death from violence or suicide. This book opens the door on a way of life unknown to most Canadians.

DR. MARK TOTTEN's research focuses on gangs, sexual exploitation andtrafficking, crime prevention, mental health, child maltreatment and familyviolence, bullying and harassment, corrections and policing, and gender identity.He has worked on eight major studies in this area during the past fifteen years,in research funded by public agencies like the Department of Justice Canadaand the National Crime Prevention Centre. Many of his projects involvepartnerships with Aboriginal and ethno-racial communities.

In 2011-2012, he is collaborating with groups in Ontario and WesternCanada in the development and evaluation of multi-year gang prevention,intervention, and suppression strategies.

Mark Totten is past Director of Research at the Youth Services Bureau ofOttawa (1987-2007) and has worked with high-risk children, youth, adults,and families for over thirty years. A well-known expert witness for both Crownand Defence Counsel on gangs and criminal subculture, he has written manybooks, academic articles, and government reports, including Guys, Gangs andGirlfriend Abuse (2000), When Children Kill: A Social-Psychological Studyon Youth Homicide (2002), and Promising Practices for Addressing YouthInvolvement in Gangs (2008).

Mark Totten's profile page

DANIEL TOTTEN is a graduate student in psychology at Carleton University.

Daniel Totten's profile page

Read Jeffrey Simpson's interview with Mark Totten at http://thechronicleherald.ca/books/91284-author-gang-members-are-created-not-born

Halifax Chronicle Herald

Mark Totten interviewed at http://www.openbookontario.com/news/writing_mark_totten

Open Book Ontario

The book is exceptionally reader friendly and written in a mostly narrative and descriptive style. The book is punctuated with numerous compelling and at times gut-wrenching, if not haunting, first-hand accounts from the 300-plus interviews that Totten has collected over the past 15 years. Totten deftly combines his strong academic training and over 20 years of experience working with youth at risk in Canada to produce one of the most comprehensive and tour de force accountings of gangs and gang members in Canada. In short, this book should be on the reading list of anyone who is the least bit interested in learning about risk factors in becoming a gang memberfor some young people, the honesty of gang life and culture, what we can/should be doing to help prevent young people from joining gangs, as well as how to assist gang members in exiting gangs.Finally, the author concludes with a frank and arguably irrefutable conclusion about how our conventional criminal justice responses to gangs are both ill informed and misguided.

Youth Voice Journal

"Totten...has spent the past 15 years studying Canada's gangs in an attempt to take an unprecedented look into the problem...The recently published Nasty, Brutish and Short: The Lives of Gang Members in Canada is the book that resulted from his extensive efforts."

Chronicle Herald

Nasty, Brutish, and Short: The Lives of Gang Members in Canada