Carter F. Smith, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. Carter is a retired Army Criminal Investigations Division (CID) Command Special Agent, and was the inaugural team chief for the Army's first and most consistently operating Gang & Extremist investigations team. Carter has provided training on Gangs and their impact on the community to police and community leaders throughout the country. His academic publications include such topics as the dangers of spontaneous gang formation, military-trained gang members, gangs and their use of technology, and gang members in colleges and universalities. He was a co-author or author of Private Security Today, Gangs, and Introduction to Gangs. He has been interviewed about gangs by several national as well as regional and local television, print, internet and radio news sources, and has appeared twice in the History Channel's Gangland series. He was a founding, and still serving, board member of the Tennessee Gang Investigators Association, a member organization of the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations. In 1995, he was a recipient of the U.S. Army CID Command Special Agent of the Year award, and is a three-time recipient of the Frederic Milton Thrasher Award of the National Gang Crime Research Center.