Areas of Expertise

• Race and crime
• Racial profiling
• Sentencing and corrections
• Drugs and crime
• Drug control policy
• Criminal justice reform

Key Findings

• The least effective programs operate in a non-intensive manner and address only a narrow segment of the issues that affect incarcerated substance abusers. MORE
• One type of treatment program, therapeutic communities (TC), was consistently found to be effective in reducing post-release offenses and drug use. MORE
• Residential substance abuse treatment programs and group counseling programs were found to be effective in reducing re-offenses but were not found to be effective at reducing drug use. MORE
• The War on Drugs, with it’s emphasis on making large numbers of arrests for low-level drug offenses, disproportionately affected African-Americans. MORE
• Racial neutrality of sentencing decisions needs to be re-evaluated to ensure even treatment across race and level of offense. MORE

Biography

Ojmarrah Mitchell, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California Irvine is an expert on courts, sentencing, race, drugs and crime. 

Mitchell previously worked at Arizona State University, University of Cincinnati, and the Urban Institute. For his research, he received the Western Society of Criminology’s W.E.B. Du Bois award. He also has served on numerous advisory roles including the U.S. Department of Justice’s Science Advisory Board, New York City’s Pretrial Research Advisory Council, Philadelphia’s Pretrial Reform Advisory Council, and the American Society of Criminology’s Executive Board. 

He has published in numerous scholarly journals, including Criminology & Public Policy, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Crime and Justice. 

Mitchell earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland and B.A. in sociology from the University of Washington.