Charis E. Kubrin

About

Charis E. Kubrin is a Chancellor's Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the UCI School of Social Ecology, with a courtesy appointment in Sociology. Her research primarily examines the immigration-crime nexus, the impact of immigration-related policies on immigrant communities, and the effects of criminal justice reform on crime rates. She also explores the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials against young men of color, critiquing the intersection of media, culture, and justice. Prof. Kubrin has held various prestigious positions and fellowships, including being a member of the Council on Criminal Justice, the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network, and a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Criminology. She is actively involved in multiple research networks and initiatives, such as co-directing the Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space and Crime and organizing workshops on corrections reform. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized through numerous awards from the American Society of Criminology and the Western Society of Criminology, including the W.E.B. DuBois Award and the Paul Tappan Award. She was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2019 and is a co-recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, awarded in 2026. Prof. Kubrin is also known for her public engagement, including a TEDx talk on rap music and justice issues, and she has authored several books and articles addressing topics such as…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Criminology
• Law
• Demography
• Economics
• Computer Security
• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• (Re)conceptualizing Neighborhood Ecology in Social Disorganization Theory: From a Variable-Centered Approach to a Neighborhood-Centered Approach

  Crime & Delinquency · 2021 · 27 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of research on communities and crime. Studies emphasize individual impacts of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity by examining their independent effects on crime, adopting a variable-centered approach. We use a “neighborhood-centered” approach that considers how structural forces combine into unique constellations that vary across communities, with consequences for crime.…

  DOI

• Immigration and Crime

  SpringerBriefs in criminology · 2023 · 20 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sanctuary Status and Crime in California: What’s the Connection?

  Justice Evaluation Journal · 2020 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  In 2017, California officially became a sanctuary state following the passage of Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the passage of SB54, critics worried that crime rates would rise. What impact did this policy have on crime in California? The current study, the first of its kind, addresses this question. Using a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2018, we employ a synthetic cont…

  PublisherDOI

• How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical Considerations

  American Journal of Criminal Justice · 2022-12-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making the call: how does perceived race affect desire to call the police?

  Journal of Experimental Criminology · 2023-05-12 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Objectives: There is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police. Methods: We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more seri…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Explaining Low Crime Rates in Immigrant Communities

  NSF · $268k · 2015–2018

Frequent coauthors

• William Thompson

  Johns Hopkins University

  32 shared

• Graham C. Ousey

  William & Mary

  31 shared

• Gregory D. Squires

  George Washington University

  22 shared

• Tim Wadsworth

  University of Colorado Boulder

  17 shared

• Simon A. Cole

  University of California, Irvine

  16 shared

• Tommy Kemp

  University of Southern California

  16 shared

• Bobby Lovell

  University of Southern California

  16 shared

• Gasper Patrico

  Texas Christian University

  16 shared

Labs

• ILSSC Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and CrimePI

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Washington

Awards & honors

• Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Soci…
• Herbert Bloch Award from the American Society of Criminology
• Coramae Richey Mann Award from the Division on People of Col…
• W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology
• Paul Tappan Award from the Western Society of Criminology

Similar researchers at University of California, Irvine

• Elizabeth F. Loftush-93
• John R. Hipph-55
• Valerie Jennessh-34