Cynthia Lum

Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University

Areas of Expertise

  • Policing
  • Security
  • Criminal justice evaluation
  • Criminology
  • Criminal justice reform
  • Terrorism

Key Findings

  • The most common use of crime analytic technology in both sites was in responding to a call for service. MORE
  • Data from mobile computers were most valuable to increase officer safety when attending a call. MORE
  • Technology was most used to determine domestic violence history or criminal history before responding to a call or while in the field. MORE
  • The best policing strategy to reduce crime is based on research that is area-specific, proactive, and focused. MORE
  • Individuals who expressed high levels of police trust were more likely to support LPR to locate stolen vehicles. MORE
  • Individuals who considered LPR data to be non-private were much more likely to approve its use to detect stolen vehicles. MORE

Biography

Cynthia Lum, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, is an expert in policing, security, criminal justice evaluation and translational criminology.

Lum is the Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. She helped develop the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix and the Matrix Demonstration Projects, translation tools designed to help police practitioners incorporate research into their strategic and tactical portfolio. Lum has been appointed to the Committee on Proactive Policing for the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the IACP, the International Advisory Committee of the Scottish Institute for Police Research and the Board of Trustees for the Pretrial Justice Institute.

She has been published in numerous academic journals, including Police Quarterly, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research and Criminology and Public Policy.

Lum received her Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland, MSc. in Criminology from the London School of Economics and B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of California Los Angeles.