Shawn Bushway Associate Professor PhD (1996) Carnegie Mellon University      The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management    Public Policy Analysis and Political Economy      B.S. (1989) University of Notre Dame

Shawn Bushway is a criminologist with a background in public policy, economics and statistics. In all of his research, he attempts to a) think about policy relevance and b) empirically identify causal relationships, usually with quasi-experimental techniques.

One broad substantive area of interest is desistance from crime. Shawn has focused on measuring desistance and developing methods to study the causal factors driving desistance using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Rochester Youth Development Study. He has also conducted research on the process of reentry, and the role of work (and work restrictions) on offender reentry. This research involves study of the stigmatic impact of a criminal history record and of the efficacy of crime prevention programs based in the labor market. Recent work has attempted to assess how long an ex-offender has to remain arrest-free before he “looks like” a non-offender.

A second substantive interest involves the sentencing process. The criminal justice system has multiple actors who interact to create a sentencing outcome. Modeling the location and allocation of discretion within that system is an interesting and important research endeavor. Recently, Shawn has begun to study the impact of incarceration on offending over the life course, a topic that combines his two interests.

To view a copy of Dr. Bushway's vitae, Click here.

Course Information

Economics and Crime

This course is intended for advanced criminal justice majors. It assumes familiarity with the major theories in criminology and criminal justice and comfort with basic statistics and research methods. The course will survey the contribution of economists to the study of crime, and explicitly asks how this contribution expands and/or contradicts research in criminology. This contribution is both theoretical, and empirical. We will start with a thorough review of the microeconomic theory of behavior and explore Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker's application to the study of crime. We will then read Steve Levitt's best selling new book, Freakonomics, to help us learn how to think like economists in the domain of crime. Finally, we will cover a number of important research articles by economists about the police, guns, and the courts.

For additional information on Economics and Crime see: http://www.popcenter.umd.edu/criminologyandeconomics/home.shtml