Deadline: By September 5, 2025, submit nominations to Dr. LaDonna Long, Chair of the DPCC Awards Committee, at llong@roosevelt.edu.
Elsa Chen is a Professor and Chair of Political Science at Santa Clara University. Her work focuses on criminal justice reform, reentry from incarceration, criminal record expungement, the implementation and effects of mandatory minimum sentences, and racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing outcomes. She co-edited Beyond Recidivism: New Approaches to Research on Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration with Andrea Leverentz and Johnna Christian (NYU Press 2020). Dr. Chen’s work has appeared in journals including Justice Quarterly, Punishment & Society, Law & Policy, Feminist Criminology, Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, and the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. Dr. Chen is a member of the National Academies of Science, Education, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee on Law and Justice, and was a member of the National Academies Committee on Evaluating Success Among People Released from Prison that authored The Limits of Recidivism: Measuring Success After Prison (2022). Dr. Chen has served on the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Executive Board, the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network steering committee, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs’ Science Advisory Board, and served as Executive Council member and co-chair of the ASC Division on People of Color and Crime.
Previous Awardees | 2008 – Present
2023 – Shaun L. Gabbidon
2022 – Rod K. Brunson
2021 – Nancy Rodriguez
2020 – Avelardo Valdez
2019 – Not Awarded
2018 – Merry Morash
2017 – Darnell Hawkins
2016 – Katheryn Russell-Brown
2015 – Ross Matsueda
2014 – Robert Crutchfield
2013 – Michael Leiber
2012 – Lauren Krivo
2011 – Ramiro Martinez and Barry Krisberg
2010 – Helen Taylor Greene
2009 – Marjorie Zatz
2008 – Ruth Peterson