Dave Kirk is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Research Associate of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, and previously served on the faculties at the University of Oxford, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Maryland. Kirk’s research agenda is primarily organized around three inter-related themes: the causes and consequences of cynicism and distrust of the police and the law, solutions to criminal recidivism, and the causes and consequences of gun violence. His talk is based on ongoing work on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a five wave multicohort study of individuals that began in the mid-1990s, with the most recent data collection completed in 2021. It unites the longitudinal study of individual lives with social context, especially neighborhoods, families, schools, peers, and the criminal justice system.