Criminal Justice Studies Program
Program Chair
Franklin E. Zimring
383 Boalt Hall
Phone: 510-642-0854
Email: fzimring@law.berkeley.edu
ILR's Criminal Justice Studies Program has been a strong research presence at Boalt Hall since 1983.
The major studies produced by the program have included:
- a transnational comparison of crime rates and rates of lethal violence in the G7 nations;
- a study of capital punishment's end in Europe;
- statistical studies of the effect of California's fourfold increase in imprisonment on felony crime rates in the 1980s;
- a statistical and policy analysis of American youth violence;
- policy studies on the scale of imprisonment in the United States and in California; and
- the largest study yet done on the administration and deterrent impact of the California's 1994 "three strikes and you're out" legislation.
Current projects include a series of empirical studies of capital punishment in the United States and Asia; a series of monographs about adolescent development and justice system policies that is supported by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice; and a book on the causes and effects of declines in crime in the United States during the 1990s.
Institute staff or fellows are the principal investigators on program research projects, including the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention. These scholars hold teaching positions at several different universities and approach the research from a variety of disciplines. Graduate and law students get practical training in empirical research methods working with fellows as research assistants.
Recent Publications
An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending, University of Chicago Press (2004)
The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, by Franklin E. Zimring, Oxford University Press (2003); paperback edition (2004)
La Racionalidad de las Leyes Penales: Práctica y Teoria [The Rationality of Penal Law: Practice and Theory], by José Luis Díez Ripollés, Editorial Trotta (2003)
A Century of Juvenile Justice, edited by Margaret K. Rosenheim, Franklin E. Zimring, David S. Tanenhaus and Bernardine Dohrn, University of Chicago Press (2002)
Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You're Out in California, by Franklin E. Zimring, Gordon Hawkins and Sam Kamin, Oxford University Press (2001)
The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the Criminal Court, edited by Jeffrey Fagan and Franklin E. Zimring, University of Chicago Press (2000)
American Youth Violence, by Franklin E. Zimring, Oxford University Press (1998)
Fellows
Professor Emeritus Gordon Hawkins, Senior Fellow in the Criminal Justice Studies Program since 1984, passed away in February 2004 at the age of 84. To read his obituary by Judge Greg Woods QC of Australia, click here.
The current roster of fellows includes:
Anthony Doob, Criminology, University of Toronto, Canada
Cristina de Maglie, Law, University of Pavia, Italy
Jeffrey Fagan, Law and Public Health, Columbia University
Bernard Harcourt, Law, University of Chicago
David Johnson, Sociology, University of Hawaii
Richard Leo, Law, University of San Francisco
Justin McCrary, Economics, University of Michigan
Loic Wacquant, Sociology, UC Berkeley