This NIJ Research Forum, the first of three volumes, presents the papers delivered at the opening session of the 1999 Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation. Volume 1 contains two ethnographers' perspectives on aspects of street crime that contributed to its surge in the eighties and are affecting its current decline. Sudhir Venkatesh provides insight on the anatomy of a gang and on planning intervention strategy. Richard Curtis describes how drug distributors and users operate and how inner-city neighborhoods are affected when ex-convicts return from incarceration. Also, Charles H. Ramsey, Chief of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, discusses important social issues and how we can help create a future that will foster declining—rather than rising—crime rates.