Jeffrey Fagan

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Jeffrey Fagan
Born (1946-12-17) December 17, 1946 (age 77)
Education New York University (B.A., 1968), State University of New York at Buffalo (M.S., 1971; Ph.D., 1975)
Scientific career
Fields Sociology, criminology, law, epidemiology
Institutions Columbia Law School, Mailman School of Public Health
Thesis A predictive model of "success" in criminal justice employment programs  (1975)

Jeffrey Alan Fagan (born December 17, 1946) is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is also the director of that institution's Center for Crime, Community and Law, and a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health.

Contents

Education and career

Fagan received his B.A. from New York University in 1968, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1971 and 1975, respectively. [1]

Work

Fagan researches multiple topics in the fields of criminal law and social policy, including capital punishment and racial profiling. [1] For example, he is an outspoken critic of stop-and-frisk in New York City, and his research on the practice was a major factor in Shira Scheindlin's decision to strike it down as unconstitutional in 2013. [2] This research includes a 2012 report he authored which found that about 95,000 NYPD stops under this program violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, because police did not cite reasonable suspicion for conducting the stops in their forms. [3] His research has also found that police stops are most effective in reducing crime when they are based on objectively suspicious behavior, which also reduces the chance that an innocent person will be detained. [4]

In 2016, he and Joscha Legewie co-authored a study that found that in the United States, police killings of black people were higher in cities with more racial polarization, especially when the city has two ethnic groups of equal population. They also found that this effect can be reduced by hiring more black police officers. [5]

Honors, awards, and positions

In 2000, Fagan received the Bruce Smith Sr. Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. From 2002 to 2005 he received the Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was named a Soros Senior Justice Fellow by the Open Society Foundations from 2005 to 2006. He served on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academy of Sciences from 2000 to 2006. He served on the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice from 1996 to 2006. He is a fellow of the American Society of Criminology. [1] [6]

Editorial activities

Fagan serves on the editorial boards of several criminology and law journals. He is a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency . [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broken windows theory</span> Criminological theory

In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, antisocial behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking and fare evasion help to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness.

A Terry stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause which is needed for arrest. When police stop and search a pedestrian, this is commonly known as a stop and frisk. When police stop an automobile, this is known as a traffic stop. If the police stop a motor vehicle on minor infringements in order to investigate other suspected criminal activity, this is known as a pretextual stop. Additional rules apply to stops that occur on a bus.

De-policing is a term for police disengaging from active police work, generally as a reaction to external scrutiny or negative publicity. A form of work slowdown, de-policing represents a de facto police strike, in which the police withdraw an aspect of their crime prevention services. It is a practical police protest at perceived political interference in their day-to-day task of policing.

CompStat—or COMPSTAT, short for Compare Stats— is a police management system created by the New York City Police Department in 1994 with assistance from the New York City Police Foundation. Under CompStat, the department keeps a daily-updated digital record of crimes reported and in weekly meetings the department's leadership gathers to review trends in the data. It was credited with decreased crime rates in NYC during its early years, though scholarship is divided on whether it played a role. It has been criticized for leading to data manipulation and increased stop-and-frisk searches. Variations of the program have been used in police departments worldwide.

In the United States, the relationship between race and crime has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. Crime rates vary significantly between racial groups; however, academic research indicates that the over-representation of some racial minorities in the criminal justice system can in part be explained by socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, exposure to poor neighborhoods, poor access to public and early education, and exposure to harmful chemicals and pollution. Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as blacks have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas through actions of the government and private actors. Various explanations within criminology have been proposed for racial disparities in crime rates, including conflict theory, strain theory, general strain theory, social disorganization theory, macrostructural opportunity theory, social control theory, and subcultural theory.

The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (MDVE) evaluated the effectiveness of various police responses to domestic violence calls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This experiment was implemented during 1981-82 by Lawrence W. Sherman, Director of Research at the Police Foundation, and by the Minneapolis Police Department with funding support from the National Institute of Justice. Among a pool of domestic violence offenders for whom there was probable cause to make an arrest, the study design called for officers to randomly select one third of the offenders for arrest, one third would be counseled and one third would be separated from their domestic partner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Race in the United States criminal justice system</span>

Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups in convicting and sentencing felons in the United States criminal justice system. Although prior arrests and criminal history is also a factor. Experts and analysts have debated the relative importance of different factors that have led to these disparities.

Lawrence W. Sherman is an American experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing.

The War on Drugs is a term for the actions taken and legislation enacted by the US federal government, intended to reduce or eliminate the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs. The War on Drugs began during the Nixon administration with the goal of reducing the supply of and demand for illegal drugs, but an ulterior racial motivation has been proposed. The War on Drugs has led to controversial legislation and policies, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches, which have been suggested to be carried out disproportionately against minorities. The effects of the War on Drugs are contentious, with some suggesting that it has created racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment, and rehabilitation. Others have criticized the methodology and the conclusions of such studies. In addition to disparities in enforcement, some claim that the collateral effects of the War on Drugs have established forms of structural violence, especially for minority communities.

The stop-question-and-frisk program, or stop-and-frisk, in New York City, is a New York City Police Department (NYPD) practice of temporarily detaining, questioning, and at times searching civilians and suspects on the street for weapons and other contraband. This is what is known in other places in the United States as the Terry stop. The rules for the policy are contained in the state's criminal procedure law section 140.50 and based on the decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio.

David L. Weisburd, is an Israeli/American criminologist who is well known for his research on crime and place, policing and white collar crime. Weisburd was the 2010 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize in Criminology, and was awarded the Israel Prize in Social Work and Criminological Research in 2015, considered the state's highest honor. Weisburd is Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. and Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Law and Criminal Justice in the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Faculty of Law. At George Mason University, Weisburd was founder of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and is now its Executive Director. Weisburd also serves as Chief Science Advisor at the National Policing Institute in Washington, D.C. Weisburd was the founding editor of the Journal of Experimental Criminology, and is editor of the Cambridge Elements in Criminology Series.

<i>Floyd v. City of New York</i>

Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., 959 F. Supp. 2d 540, is a set of cases addressing the class action lawsuit filed against the City of New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and named and unnamed New York City police officers ("Defendants"), alleging that defendants have implemented and sanctioned a policy, practice, and/or custom of unconstitutional stops and frisks by the New York Police Department ("NYPD") on the basis of race and/or national origin, in violation of Section 1983 of title forty-two of the United States Code, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Constitution and laws of the State of New York.

Racial profiling by law enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels, leads to discrimination against people in the African American, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino, Arab, and Muslim communities of the United States. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations, or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband. Besides such disproportionate searching of African Americans and members of other minority groups, other examples of racial profiling by law enforcement in the U.S. include the Trump-era China Initiative following racial profiling against Chinese American scientists; the targeting of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the investigation of illegal immigration; and the focus on Middle Eastern and South Asians present in the country in screenings for ties to Islamic terrorism. These suspicions may be held on the basis of belief that members of a target racial group commit crimes at a higher rate than that of other racial groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal justice reform in the United States</span> Reforms seeking to address structural issues in criminal justice systems of the United States

Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.

Anthony Allan Braga is an American criminologist and the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Braga is also the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously held faculty and senior research positions at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Braga is a member of the federal monitor team overseeing the reforms to New York City Police Department (NYPD) policies, training, supervision, auditing, and handling of complaints and discipline regarding stops and frisks and trespass enforcement.

Gregory Kirk Ridgeway is professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also chair of the Department of Criminology.

Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, and sentencing.

Samuel Emlen Walker is an American civil liberties, policing, and criminal justice expert. He specializes in police accountability.

The Museum of Broken Windows is a pop-up exhibition organised by the New York State affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. Housed within the Cooper Union's Foundation Building on Cooper Square, the project has been displayed twice, first from September 22 through 30, 2018, and then between September 13 and October 8, 2019.

Henry ("Hank") F. Fradella is an American lawyer and criminologist who is a professor of criminology at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Jeffrey Fagan". Mailman School of Public Health. Columbia University. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  2. Cassidy, John (13 August 2013). "The Statistical Debate Behind the Stop-and-Frisk Verdict". The New Yorker. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  3. Paybarah, Azi (12 December 2012). "Anti-stop-and-frisk professor runs NYPD data, quantifies his criticism". Politico. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  4. Schuppe, Jon; Bailey, Chelsea (23 September 2016). "More Stop-and-Frisk? Trump's Suggestion Overlooks Major Problems With Tactic". NBC News. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  5. Jacobs, Tom (8 July 2016). "Where and Why Do Police Kill African Americans?". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  6. "Jeffrey Fagan CV" (PDF). Retrieved 30 September 2016.