Robert J. Sampson

About

Robert J. Sampson is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University. He also holds the position of Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and is the founding director of the Boston Area Research Initiative. Additionally, he serves as the Scientific Director of the ongoing Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN+). Prior to his current roles, Professor Sampson taught at the University of Chicago. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of several prestigious organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Society of Criminology, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the British Academy as a Corresponding Fellow. He is also a former President of the American Society of Criminology and was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2011. Professor Sampson's research and teaching encompass a broad range of topics such as crime and criminal justice, the life course and social change, neighborhood effects, collective civic engagement, inequality, and urban social structure. He has authored numerous articles and multiple award-winning books, including the second edition of "Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect," published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024. His most recent book, "Marked by Time: How Social Change…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Criminology
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Law
• Gender studies
• Mathematical analysis
• Genetics
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 928 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter addresses one of the central yet difficult issues facing criminology–race and violent crime. It discusses a theoretical strategy that incorporates both structural and cultural arguments regarding race, crime, and inequality in American cities. The basic thesis is that macrosocial patterns of residential inequality give rise to the social isolation and ecological concentration of the truly disadvantaged, which in turn leads to structural barriers and cultural adaptations that undermi…

  DOI

• Structural Variations in Juvenile Court Processing

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 209 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Although there is a rich body of theory on crime causation, development of general sociological theory on criminal justice has been sparse. A major reason is that the criminal justice literature is dominated by a focus on individual level case processing, in particular how “extralegal” factors such as race, social class, and gender influence court decision making. This chapter addresses the lack of a macrolevel focus on juvenile justice by providing a theoretical framework and empirical assessme…

  DOI

• 1 Cultural Mechanisms and Killing Fields: A Revised Theory of Community-Level Racial Inequality

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022 · 192 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inequalities in Exposure to Firearm Violence by Race, Sex, and Birth Cohort From Childhood to Age 40 Years, 1995-2021

  JAMA Network Open · 2023-05-09 · 32 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Importance: The past quarter-century has seen both sharp declines and increases in firearm violence in the United States. Yet, little is known about the age of first exposure to firearm violence and how it may differ by race, sex, and cohort. Objective: To examine race, sex, and cohort differences in exposure to firearm violence in a representative longitudinal study of children who grew up in periods with varying rates of firearm violence in the United States and to examine spatial proximity to…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cohort bias in predictive risk assessments of future criminal justice system involvement

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-05-30 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Risk assessment instruments (RAIs) are widely used to aid high-stakes decision-making in criminal justice settings and other areas such as health care and child welfare. These tools, whether using machine learning or simpler algorithms, typically assume a time-invariant relationship between predictors and outcome. Because societies are themselves changing and not just individuals, this assumption may be violated in many behavioral settings, generating what we call cohort bias. Analyzing criminal…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P01AG031093

  NIH · $21.6M · 2014

• RIDIR: Collaborative Research: Portal to Data and Analysis Tools (P->DAT): Enabling Data-Intensive Research in the Urban Sciences on Linked, Large-Scale Records

  NSF · $530k · 2016–2019

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Skill-Based Sorting into Neighborhoods and Schools

  NSF · $16k · 2019–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen W. Raudenbush

  University of Chicago

  387 shared

• Felton J. Earls

  365 shared

• Jeanne Brooks‐Gunn

  Columbia University

  337 shared

• John H. Laub

  78 shared

• Daniel S. Nagin

  Carnegie Mellon University

  32 shared

• Jeffrey D. Morenoff

  19 shared

• T. E. Moffitt

  15 shared

• Jeanne Brooks‐Gunn

  14 shared

Labs

• PHDCNPI

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  Harvard University

  1990

• Other, Sociology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1985

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow of the American Philosophical Society
• Fellow of the American Society of Criminology
• Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Scien…
• John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow

Similar researchers at Harvard University

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• Michèle Lamonth-57
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