Westminster Prof Wins Award for Gang Investigation – Business Journal Daily

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. – Andy Bain, associate professor of criminal justice studies at Westminster College and an expert on gangs, has won the 2024 Frederic Milton Thrasher Award for outstanding achievement in gang research.

Bain is a two-time recipient of the Thrasher Award, given by the National Gang Crime Research Center for outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service contributions related to public safety issues. In 2016, he was recognized for superior research on criminal motorcycle gangs. In 2019, the NGCRC recognized Bain’s efforts, granting him expert status on gangs and transnational organized crime.

Over the past 20 years, Bain has authored and co-authored numerous academic texts examining professional roles in the criminal justice system, crime and behavior, and outlaw motorcycle gangs. Together with colleagues Mark Lauchs and Peter Bell, he provided the first theoretical discourse on motorcycle gangs.

With Lauchs, Bain is the editor of “Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs: International Perspectives – Vol. I and II,” available from Carolina Academic Press. He is the editor of “Law Enforcement and Technology” (2016), available from Palgrave-McMillan, and co-author of “Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs: A Theoretical Perspective” (2015), also available from Palgrave-McMillan.

Bain’s current research interests include gangs and their members, gangs and the Internet, police technology, policing and social groups, the social psychology of criminal and risk behavior, and the psychology of crime and behavior.

Bain, who joined the faculty of Westminster College in 2023, received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southampton and his masters and doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, both in the United Kingdom. Before joining Westminster, he taught at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Mount Union.