Teaching Faculty Profiles

John MacDonald
Jerry Lee Assistant Professor of Criminology

B.A., 1994, Vassar College; M.A., 1996, Ph.D., 1999, University of Maryland

Email: johnmm@sas.upenn.edu
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Research Areas

Professor MacDonald works on a wide variety of issues in criminology including: understanding police behavior, racial/ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, and the social epidemiology of crime and violence. He has also been actively involved in a range of projects evaluating the effectiveness of public policy interventions aimed at reducing violence and other criminal behaviors.

Current Projects

Professor MacDonald is currently working on two projects funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that focus on youth violence. These include a study of the impact of local business improvement districts (BIDs) in Los Angeles at creating neighborhood change and reducing youth violence, and a longitudinal study of the effects of substance abuse treatment at fostering the desistance from crime and violence in early adulthood among youthful offenders. In addition to these funded projects he is also working on studies that examine the use of counterfactual models of causal inference for assessing racial bias in police behavior and the effect of gang membership on victimization.

Academic Positions Held

1998-1999: Program Specialist, National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice
1999-2003: Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina
2001-2003: Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina
2002-2003: Assistant Department Chair, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina
2004: Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of Florida
2004-2006: Behavioral Scientist, RAND Corporation
2006: Professor of Policy Analysis, The Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy
2006-present: Jerry Lee Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania

Representive Publications

“Gender Bias and Juvenile Justice Revisited: A Multi-year Analysis,” (with Meda Chesney-Lind) Crime and Delinquency, 47: 173-195, 2001.

“The Structural Determinants of Justifiable Homicide: Assessing the Theoretical and Political Considerations,” with Karen Parker, Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary & International Journal, 5: 187-205, 2001.

“The Effectiveness of Community Policing in Reducing Urban Violence,” Crime and Delinquency, 48: 592-618, 2002.

“The Effect of Ethnicity on Juvenile Court Outcomes in Hawaii,” Youth and Society, 35: 243-263, 2003.

“Combating Domestic Violence in Rural America: Findings from an Evaluation of a Local Domestic Violence Court,” with Angela Gover and Geoffrey Alpert, Criminology and Public Policy, 3: 109-132, 2003.

“Studying Frequency of Arrest Among Paroled Youthful Offenders,” with Pamela Lattimore, Alex R. Piquero, Richard L. Linster, and Christy A. Visher, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 41: 37-57, 2004.

“The Relationship Between Violent Offending and Death by Homicide: A Test of the General Theory of Crime,” with Alex Piquero, Adam Dobrin, Leah Daigle, and Francis Cullen, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 21: 55-71, 2005.

“Police Suspicion and Discretionary Decision Making During Citizen Stops,” with Geoffrey Alpert and Roger Dunham, Criminology, 43: 407-434, 2005.

“Race, Social Capital, and Trust in the Police,” with Robert Stokes, Urban Affairs Review, 41: 358-375, 2006.

“The Efficacy of the Rio Hondo DUI Court: A 2-Year Field Experiment,” with Andrew R. Morral, Barbara Raymond, and Christine Eibner, Evaluation Review: 31, 4-23, 2007.

“Race, Neighborhood Context, and Perceptions of Injustice by the Police,“ with Robert Stokes, Greg Ridgeway, and K. Jack Riley, Urban Studies (in press).

“Estimating the Effects of Light Rail Transit on Health Care Costs,” (with Robert Stokes and Greg Ridgeway) Health and Place, 14: 45-58, 2008.

“The Dynamic Relationship between Homicide Rates and Social, Economic, and Political Factors from 1970 to 2000,” Social Science Research (in press).

“Overdispersion and Poisson Regression,” (with Richard Berk) Journal of Quantitative Criminology (in press).

 

 

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