Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
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. 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.
In sociology, the social disorganization theory is a theory developed by the Chicago School, related to ecological theories. The theory directly links crime rates to neighbourhood ecological characteristics; a core principle of social disorganization theory that states location matters. In other words, a person's residential location is a substantial factor shaping the likelihood that that person will become involved in illegal activities. The theory suggests that, among determinants of a person's later illegal activity, residential location is as significant as or more significant than the person's individual characteristics. For example, the theory suggests that youths from disadvantaged neighborhoods participate in a subculture which approves of delinquency, and that these youths thus acquire criminality in this social and cultural setting.
Steven Barkan, an American sociologist, is Professor and chairperson of the Sociology department at the University of Maine.
France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist. and documentary filmmaker. Twine's research has made significant contributions to interdisciplinary research in gender and sexuality studies, racism/anti-racism, feminist studies, science and technology studies, British cultural studies, and qualitative research methods. She has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism and has published 11 books and more than 80 articles, review essays, and books on these topics. In 2020 she was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the Race, Class, and Gender section of the American Sociological Association for her intellectual, innovative and creative contributions to sociology. Twine is the first sociologist to publish an ethnography on everyday racism in rural Brazil after the end of military dictatorship during the "abertura".
Jonathan Simon is an American academic, the Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, and the former Associate Dean of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Simon’s scholarship concerns the role of crime and criminal justice in governing contemporary societies, risk and the law, and the history of the interdisciplinary study of law. His other interests include criminology; penology; sociology; insurance models of governing risk; governance; the origins and consequences of, and solutions to, the California prison "crisis"; parole; prisons; capital punishment; immigration detention; and the warehousing of incarcerated people.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, one of the 13 schools and colleges within the University of Pittsburgh, is located in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its offices are in the world-famous Cathedral of Learning, a forty-story, Gothic style edifice that is the signature building of the university.
Kesho Yvonne Scott is associate professor of American Studies and Sociology at Grinnell College. Scott received her M.A. in political sociology at the University of Detroit and received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa in 1988. After receiving her doctoral degree she became Distinguished American Studies Scholar in Residence at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg (1989), visiting professor at Nanjing University in China (1994), and Fulbright visiting professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia (2001–2002). Scott's interests include black women in America, multiculturalism, and unlearning racism.
Alondra Nelson is an American policy advisor, non-profit administrator, academic, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder Chair and Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. She is Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for Science and Society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where she performed the duties of the Director from February to October 2022. From 2017-2021, she was President and CEO of the Social Science Research Council, an independent, nonpartisan international nonprofit organization. She was previously professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science, as well as director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She began her academic career on the faculty of Yale University.
Luana K. Ross is a Native American sociologist of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, located at Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Montana in 1979, her master's degree from Portland State University, and her doctorate in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1992, before serving as faculty at the University of California at Davis and UC Berkeley. Since 1999 she has been a faculty member for the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has also been an Adjunct Professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington since 1999. In January 2010, she was appointed president of Salish Kootenai College, effective in July of that year. She resigned from the position in 2012.
Freda Adler is a criminologist and educator, currently serving as Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University and a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She was President of the American Society of Criminology in 1994-1995. She has acted as a consultant to the United Nations on criminal justice matters since 1975, holding various roles within United Nations organizations. A prolific writer, Adler has published in a variety of criminological areas, including female criminality, international issues in crime, piracy, drug abuse, and social control theories.
Alice Goffman is an American sociologist, urban ethnographer, and was formerly Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin and Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pomona College.
Alisse Waterston is an American professor of anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Her work focuses on how systemic violence and inequality influence society.
Todd Ray Clear is an American criminologist and distinguished professor in the school of criminal justice at Rutgers University–Newark.
Ruth Delois Peterson is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her work on racial and ethnic inequality and crime. She earned her PhD in sociology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983. Peterson is emerita professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, former director of the Criminal Justice Research Center (1999-2011), and former president of the American Society of Criminology (2016). She is the namesake of the American Society of Criminology's Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity.
Janet Lynn Lauritsen is an American criminologist and the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
James Densley is a British-American sociologist and Professor of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University. He is best known as co-founder of The Violence Project and as co-author of the bestselling book, The Violence Project: How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Densley has also published extensively on street gang issues and has been described as "among the most accomplished rising leaders of modern gang research in criminology." He was among the top 250 most cited criminologists in the world in 2019.
Brittany Michelle Friedman is an American sociologist focusing on criminology, racial inequality, and incarceration. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and Faculty Affiliate of the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and the Equity Research Institute. Her research intersects at the sociology of law, sociology of race, economic sociology, and criminal justice. Friedman is most known for her research on the Black Guerilla Family and the black power movement behind bars, and the financialization of the criminal legal system. She is an outspoken proponent of criminal justice reform and a frequent commentator on public media outlets. Her most notable project is a book manuscript tracing the relationship between the rise of the Black Guerilla Family in California, institutional logics, and racial oppression. Separate work includes studies of monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system and policies such as pay-to-stay.
Rebecca Leigh Sandefur is an American sociologist. She is Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). At the ABF, she founded the access to justice research initiative in 2010. Sandefur also won a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2018 for "promoting a new, evidence-based approach to increasing access to civil justice for low-income communities".
Mary Romero is an American sociologist. She is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, with affiliations in African and African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian Pacific American Studies. Before her arrival at ASU in 1995, she taught at University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Professor Romero holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in Spanish from Regis College in Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado. In 2019, she served as the 110th President of the American Sociological Association.
