Working to promote community-based safety and justice through research and policymaking.
Learn more about our recent and timely work.
New Harvard Kennedy School research studied seven years of data and found pretrial detention rates of white people has declined by 40%, compared to just 3% for people of color, in Massachusetts.
Featuring Sandra Susan Smith, Katy Naples-Mitchell
Dive into the resources on how media organizations, often working in concert with scholars, produce and reproduce damaging and false narratives about race and crime.
The Racial Disparities in MA Criminal Courts report marked a potentially important turning point in efforts to address long-standing racial inequities in the Commonwealth’s court system. The roundtable brought together experts to engage in creative dialogue and problem-solving on the topic.
Domestic and global events make it an unsettlingly perfect time to revisit our fall speaker series, Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control. Learn from experts about how to make sense of these events in historical and comparative context
Harvard Kennedy School professor Sandra Susan Smith explores President Donald Trump’s policies on crime, policing, and the deployment of the National Guard in cities like D.C, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Our Fall 2025 speaker series explored the relationship between criminalization, criminal punishment bureaucracies, and authoritarian control.
Dive into the resources on how media organizations, often working in concert with scholars, produce and reproduce damaging and false narratives about race and crime.
This series defined what the system of care looks like for people who cycle through the criminal legal system, discussed outcomes, and examined case studies to build a different future.
Through empirical research that centers the voices of people who have had penal system contact, we promote sound policy and effective management in the pursuit of safety, equity, and justice.
Sociologist Robert J. Sampson investigates plunging arrest rates for youngest millennials
The Harvard Gazette
Robert J. Sampson
States have restricted, surveilled, and punished prison journalism for decades, with dire consequences—for incarcerated people and for democracy.
Inquest
Corinne Shanahan , Andrew Manuel Crespo
New Harvard Kennedy School research shows how simple reminders can nudge people to attend their court dates.
Featuring Sharad Goel, Todd Rogers
Incarceration rates fall for Black Americans, soar for white Americans without college education, finds study.
The Harvard Gazette
Christopher Muller
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