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Jennifer Doleac
American economist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jennifer Doleac is an American economist and is the executive vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. She was previously an associate professor at Texas A&M, where she directed the Justice Tech Lab.[1]
Doleac hosts the Probable Causation podcast. In October 2022, Vox named her to their "Future Perfect 50," a list of "scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future."[2]
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Education
Doleac received her B.A. in economics and mathematics from Williams College in 2003. She completed her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2012.[3]
Research and policy career
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Doleac was part of the faculty of the University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy from 2012 to 2018. She was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2015-2016 and then a Nonresident Fellow in Economic Studies.[4] She moved to Texas A&M Department of Economics as an associate professor in 2018. In 2021, Texas A&M named her one of 20 Presidential Impact Fellows at that university.[5]
In 2023, Doleac was appointed executive vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures.
Doleac's research focuses on the economics of crime and discrimination, with particular interests in prisoner reentry and on policies that affect public safety. Her work includes studies on:
- Employment and Criminal Records: The impact of policies banning employers from asking about job applicants' prior criminal records.[6]
- Daylight Savings: The impact of daylight saving time on crime.[7]
- Criminal Justice Enforcement: The impact of prosecuting non-violent misdemeanor offenses.[8]
- DNA Databases and Crime: The impact increasing DNA databases has on reducing recidivism[9][10]; DNA databases and reduced crime rates.[11][12]
- Risk Assessment: The impact algorithmic risk assessments have on sentencing[13][14]; the consequences of sex offender risk assessment at sentencing[15]
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Controversies
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Harm reduction
In 2018, Doleac, then a Brookings expert, released a working paper with Anita Mukherjee and Molly Schnell which claimed that harm reduction, an evidence-based approach focused on maximizing health, does not work. Doleac and her co-authors claimed that syringe exchange programs and naloxone distribution would worsen addiction.[16] However, the claims were disputed by public health officials who argued that the study's findings go against previous research on harm reduction.[17] In addition, Doleac and her co-authors were criticized for releasing this information without going through the peer review process.[17]
In response to the criticism, Doleac released a statement through Brookings where she said the public health discipline was filled with researchers who "collectively have so little understanding of rigorous research methods". In a seperate statement, Brookings said that it "does not take positions on issues, nor does [it] endorse Doleac's response to the criticism and feedback she received".[18]
A week after publication, the paper was amended adding additional studies on supervised-injection sites and naloxone trends. The amendment also contained new paragraphs admitting that this was likely an area that required future study.[19]
References
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