Jennifer Doleac

Last updated

Jennifer Doleac
Jennifer Doleac Open Congress 2022.jpg
Academic career
Institution Texas A&M University
FieldEconomics
Crime and Discrimination
Alma mater Williams College (BA)
Stanford University (MA, PhD)
Doctoral
advisor
Caroline Hoxby
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Website Official website

Jennifer Doleac is an American economist and is the vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. [1] She was previously an associate professor at Texas A&M, where she directed the Justice Tech Lab, was a research affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and is on the board of editors of the Journal of Economic Literature. [2] She also hosts the Probable Causation podcast. In October 2022, Vox named her to their "Future Perfect 50," a list of "scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future," [3] writing, "Doleac looks at criminal justice policy through the lens of causal factors on a society-wide level." [4]

Contents

Education and career

Doleac received her B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Williams College in 2003. She completed her PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2012 and was on the faculty of the University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy from 2012 to 2018. [5] She was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2015-2016 and then a Nonresident Fellow in Economic Studies. [6] She moved to Texas A&M Department of Economics as an associate professor with tenure in 2018. In 2021, Texas A&M named her one of 20 Presidential Impact Fellows at that university. [7]

Career

Doleac's research focuses on the economics of crime and discrimination, with particular interests in prisoner reentry and on policies that affect public safety. In work receiving media attention, she has studied the impact of policies banning employers from asking about job applicants' prior criminal records, [8] the impact of daylight saving time on crime, [9] and the impact of prosecuting non-violent misdemeanor offenses. [10]

Research on ban-the-box initiatives

Doleac has written extensively prisoner reentry. Prisoner reentry is a considerable challenge in the United States due to the ubiquity of background checks and the myriad of obstacles prisoners face reentering the labor force upon release. An increasingly popular policy at the federal, state and municipality level is the "ban the box" initiative. Employers often will ask applicants for jobs if they have any prior arrests or convictions by checking Yes or No on a "box". The ban the box initiative are laws, oftentimes at the city level, banning employers' right to ask this information of applicants during the earliest stages of the application process. In her most-cited publication, a 2018 article published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Doleac and Benjamin Hansen from the University of Oregon found that these laws had unintended consequences on the hiring of low skill minorities. [11] The authors found that ban the box policies lowered the chances of employment by 5 percent for young, low-skilled black men and almost 3 percent for young, low-skilled Hispanic men. The authors argue that this effect was caused by rampant statistical discrimination in labor markets. Without information on a candidate's criminal history, employers make extreme racially biased assumptions that the applicant is similar to his or her demographic. Thus seeing a black applicant, even one without a criminal history, the firm "fills in" the missing information by assuming he or she is like the group average, and thus is more likely to believe the applicant has a criminal history, even when they do not.

Selected research publications

Public Impact

In addition to conducting her own research, Doleac synthesizes and critiques other studies of crime and criminology, highlighting results supported by solid empirical work and by natural experiments that support causal relationships. [4] She has testified about the impact of Ban-the-box policies on hiring before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [12] and about effective crime-reduction policies before the New Mexico Legislature. [13]

Podcast

Doleac hosts the Probable Causation podcast focusing on law, economics and crime. [4]

Harm reduction

In 2018, Doleac, then a Brookings expert, released a study under Brookings along with Anita Mukherjee and Molly Schnell which claimed that harm reduction (an evidence-based approach focused on maximizing health) does not work. Doleac and her co-authors claimed that syringe exchange programs and naloxone distribution would worsen addiction. [14] However, the claims were disputed by public health officials who argued that the results of Doleac's finding go against previous research on harm reduction. Doleac and her co-authors, it was claimed, only focused on economic literature on harm reduction and ignored public health research. In response to the criticism, Doleac released a statement through Brookings where she said the public health discipline was filled with researchers who "collectively have so little understanding of rigorous research methods". In response to Doleac's comments, Brookings released a statement where the institute said that it "does not take positions on issues, nor does [it] endorse Doleac's response to the criticism and feedback she received". [15]

Economist Jennifer Doleac of Texas A&M University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her research on crime, police, and the unexpected consequences of the criminal justice system. "Jennifer Doleac on Crime". Econlib. Retrieved February 26, 2019.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gun control</span> Laws or policies that regulate firearms

Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians.

<i>More Guns, Less Crime</i> 1998 non-fiction book by John Lott

More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John R. Lott Jr. that says violent crime rates go down when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 29 years from 1977 to 2005. Each edition of the book was refereed by the University of Chicago Press. The book examines city, county and state level data from the entire United States and measures the impact of 13 different types of gun control laws on crime rates. The book expands on an earlier study published in 1997 by Lott and his co-author David Mustard in The Journal of Legal Studies and by Lott and his co-author John Whitley in The Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parole</span> Provisional release of a prisoner who agrees to certain conditions

Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.

A theory regarding the effect of legalized abortion on crime is a controversial hypothesis about the reduction in crime in the decades following the legalization of abortion. Proponents argue that the availability of abortion resulted in fewer births of children at the highest risk of committing crime. The earliest research suggesting such an effect was a 1966 study in Sweden. In 2001, Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University argued, citing their research and earlier studies, that children who are unwanted or whose parents cannot support them are likelier to become criminals. This idea was further popularized by its inclusion in the book Freakonomics, which Levitt co-wrote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recidivism</span> Person repeating an undesirable behavior following punishment

Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been trained to extinguish. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.

Concealed carry, or carrying a concealed weapon (CCW), is the practice of carrying a weapon in public in a concealed manner, either on one's person or in close proximity. CCW is often practiced as a means of self-defense. Every state in the United States allows for concealed carry of a handgun either permitless or with a permit, although the difficulty in obtaining a permit varies per jurisdiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration</span> Movement of people into another country or region to which they are not native

Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and other short-term stays in a destination country do not fall under the definition of immigration or migration; seasonal labour immigration is sometimes included, however.

Devah Iwalani Pager was an American sociologist best known for her research on racial discrimination in employment and the American criminal justice system. At the time of her death, she was Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard University. She was a class of 2011 William T. Grant Scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Hunt</span> American economist

Jennifer Hunt is a professor of economics at Rutgers University. She previously served as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury after serving a term as Chief Economist to the U.S. Secretary of Labor, serving under acting secretary Seth Harris and Secretary Thomas Perez. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has done research in the areas of employment and unemployment policy, immigration, wage inequality, transition economics, crime and corruption. Her past research focused on immigration and innovation in the United States, the U.S. science and engineering workforce, and the 2008-2009 recession in Germany. Her research on immigration has been cited by media in the context of immigration reform legislation, currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress. Her contemporary research focuses primarily on the geographic composition of technology, discrimination, and unemployment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Assault Weapons Ban</span> United States federal law

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, popularly known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB), was a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as large capacity.

Ban the Box is an American campaign by advocates for ex-offenders aimed at removing the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record from hiring applications. Its purpose is to enable ex-offenders to display their qualifications in the hiring process before being asked about their criminal records. The premise of the campaign is that anything that makes it harder for ex-offenders to find a job makes it likelier that they will reoffend, which is bad for society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manhattan Institute for Policy Research</span> American conservative think tank

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is an American conservative think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey. The institute has produced books, articles, interviews, speeches, op-eds, policy research, and the quarterly publication City Journal. Reihan Salam is the current president of the organization, which he has led since 2019.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Effects of legalized cannabis</span>

The use of cannabis as a recreational drug has been outlawed in many countries for several decades. As a result of long-fought legalization efforts, several countries such as Uruguay and Canada, as well as several states in the US, have legalized the production, sale, possession, and recreational and/or medical usage of cannabis. The broad legalization of cannabis in this fashion can have numerous effects on the economy and society in which it is legalized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lead–crime hypothesis</span> Hypothesized effect of blood lead levels on criminal behavior

After decades of increasing crime across the industrialised world, crime rates started to decline sharply in the 1990s, a trend that continued into the new millennium. Many explanations have been proposed, including situational crime prevention and interactions between many other factors complex, multifactorial causation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crime drop</span> Criminological pattern

The crime drop or crime decline is a pattern observed in many countries whereby rates of many types of crime declined by 50% or more beginning in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s.

Brian Aaron Jacob is an American economist and a professor of public policy, economics and education at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy of the University of Michigan. There, he also currently serves as co-director of the Education Policy Initiative and of the Youth Policy Lab. In 2008, Jacob's research on education policy was awarded the David N. Kershaw Award, which is given by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and honours persons who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy analysis and management before the age of 40. His doctoral advisor at the University of Chicago was Freakonomics author Steven Levitt.

Benjamin Hansen is an American economist and the W. E. Miner Professor of Economics at University of Oregon. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow at IZA, and a Research Affiliate at the University of Chicago Crime Lab. He has contributed to the scientific study of cannabis and alcohol policy, as well as crime and labor economics.

Kasey Buckles is a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and co-editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management She is known for her studies of the declining fertility of American women in recent years.

Immigration to the United States has many effects on the culture and politics of the United States.

References

  1. "Arnold Ventures Hires Jennifer Doleac as Executive Vice President of…". Arnold Ventures. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
  2. "CSWEP Board: Jennifer Doleac". American Economic Association. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  3. Communications, Vox (October 20, 2022). "Vox Announces Inaugural Future Perfect 50 List Honoring Visionary Change Agents". Vox. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Dixon-Luinenburg, Miranda (October 20, 2022). "Jennifer Doleac is helping us find nuanced, effective ways to fight crime". Vox. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  5. Dame, Marketing Communications: Web // University of Notre. "Jennifer - Doleac // Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities // University of Notre Dame". Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
  6. "Jennifer L. Doleac". Brookings. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  7. Henton, Lesley (November 1, 2021). "Texas A&M Announces 2021 Presidential Impact Fellows". Texas A&M Today. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  8. "Unintended Consequences: How 'Ban the Box' Backfires for Minority Job-Seekers". UVA Today. August 5, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  9. Walker, Micah. "Get ready to spring ahead: What are the pros and cons related to the time change?". The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  10. "A New Study Reveals that Not Prosecuting People for Nonviolent Misdemeanors May Actually Reduce Crime". Time. May 4, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  11. Doleac, Jennifer L.; Hansen, Benjamin (April 1, 2020). "The Unintended Consequences of "Ban the Box": Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden". Journal of Labor Economics. 38 (2): 321–374. doi: 10.1086/705880 . ISSN   0734-306X.
  12. "Empirical evidence on the effects of Ban the Box policies; Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; Jennifer L. Doleac" (PDF). Committee on Oversight and Reform.
  13. "Want to fight crime? Hire a teen this summer - Albuquerque Journal". www.abqjournal.com. July 30, 2022. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  14. Schnell, Jennifer L. Doleac, Anita Mukherjee, and Molly (December 7, 2018). "Research roundup: What does the evidence say about how to fight the opioid epidemic?". Brookings. Retrieved January 18, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. "An Influential Think Tank Suggested That Harm Reduction Doesn't Work". www.vice.com. December 13, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2021.