John H. Laub (University of Maryland)

President Obama on Friday nominated ^[1] John Laub (University of Illinois-Chicago, State University of New York – Albany) to head the Institute of Justice ^[2], the Justice Department’s research and development branch. Laub is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland at College Park, and was a 2005 recipient of the Edwin H. Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology.

Laub has an extensive background in the field of criminology. Before taking a faculty position at UMD, Laub taught criminal justice courses at the University of Massachusetts in Boston from 1981 to 1998, edited the Journal of Quantitative Criminology for five years and published two books on criminology. From 2002 to 2008, Laub sat on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science.

The National Institute of Justice, created in 1969, takes a research-based approach to law enforcement, partnering with state and local policymakers to, as the agency’s Web site says, “create scientific, relevant, and reliable knowledge — with a particular emphasis on terrorism, violent crime, drugs and crime, cost-effectiveness, and community-based efforts — to enhance the administration of justice and public safety.”