Spotlight

Juvenile Arrest and College Attainment

PCJ faculty affiliate Robert Sampson has co-authored a new study looking at whether an officially recorded juvenile arrest lingers beyond high school through college completion. The Great Leveler? Juvenile Arrest, College Attainment, and the Future of American Inequality finds that juvenile arrest is associated with a 20 to 30 percentage-point decrease in one’s likelihood of graduating from a four-year college. This association persists for college enrollees and is consistent across sociodemographic groups and birth cohorts. This study offers new insights on how official legal entanglement prior to adulthood may contribute to inequality in the United States.

Research from Faculty and Affiliates

 

New research by Philip Torrey documents the cruel and abusive use of solitary confinement in immigration detention.

 

New  research by faculty affiliates Marcella Alsan and Crystal S. Yang  suggests that healthcare accreditation of jails may improve access to medical care and lower death rates. 

 

Faculty Affiliate Carol Steiker argues in Inquest that Biden’s end-of-term commutations saved lives but ultimately lost the moral argument.

 

Sandra Susan Smith writes about courtroom observers as an accountability tool in tracking policy changes aimed at increasing equity.

 

New research by Sharad Goel looks at disparate impact in a dataset of 2.2 million pedestrian stop-and-frisk decisions recorded by the NYPD.

 

New PCJ research looks at the many perils of being released from jail in the middle of the night, an all-too-common practice.

 

Sandra Susan Smith explores how pretrial incarceration affects job retention, job-seeking, and relative confidence in the ability to get a job.

 

Harvard Law Professor Alexandra Natapoff explains the stark inequalities between the top and bottom of the criminal justice system in a lecture to celebrate her appointment as the Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law.

 

Interview with Sandra Susan Smith, Katy Naples-Mitchell and Haruka Margaret Braun on their research brief on jury exclusion in Massachusetts, Inequitable and Undemocratic.

 

New PCJ research reveals large racial disparities in trust in law enforcement and a strong association between experiences of police harassment and self-reported chronic health conditions.

 

New research by Harvard doctoral student Michael Zanger-Tishler looks at algorithmic racial bias in the risk assessment instruments (RAIs) used in the criminal legal system. 

 

Premal Dharia, executive director of Harvard Law’s Institute to End Mass Incarceration, discusses her new anthology on transforming the criminal system, Dismantling Mass Incarceration.

 

New PCJ report seeks to understand how Boston residents conceptualize healthy, safe, and thriving communities.

 

New research by Justin de Benedictis-Kessner examines whether mayors’ partisan affiliations lead to differences in crime and policing. 

Events

In June 2024, a group of experts in the field of criminal system health convened at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute to establish consensus around the central problems that produce or accentuate disparities in health equity for people subjected to criminalization and punishment. Our Fall 2024 speaker series, The Diagnosis of Incarceration: The Health Impacts of Criminal System Involvement, built on that emerging consensus and explored the nature and extent of health inequities in the system. We were joined by a multidisciplinary ensemble of guests to critically explore perception, policy, and practice surrounding healthcare and incarceration. 

Recordings of all six events in the series are now available.

News and Commentary

U.S. wants to deport FBI informant who was set to testify in gang case in Massachusetts
WBUR, June 27, 2025
Quoted: Alexandra Natapoff

Harvard Law Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo receives the 2025 Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence
Harvard Law Today, May 29, 2025
Featured: Andrew Manuel Crespo

Three affiliates named 2025 Guggenheim Fellows
The Harvard Gazette, April 17, 2025
Featured: Christopher Muller

Trump Is Sending People To The Camps
Talking Points Memo, April 16, 2025
Featured: Sandra Susan Smith

More News and Commentary

Course Guide

Our Program in Criminal Justice annual course guide contains a broad selection of courses from across Harvard's different schools. Many of the courses are taught by our PCJ faculty affiliates. Topics include policing, mass incarceration, the use of algorithms, injury prevention, firearms, prison education, gender violence, surveillance, and abolitionist movements.  It has been updated for the Spring 2025 semester.

 

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