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

Ojmarrh Mitchell, Associate Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, is an expert in courts, sentencing, race, drugs and crime.

Mitchell previously worked at the University of Cincinnati, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Urban Institute. He consulted with the national evaluation of the Breaking the Cycle Demonstration Project, the national evaluation of Juvenile Correctional Facilities and an experimental evaluation of the Maryland Correctional Boot Camp. He is a member of the American Society of Criminology and Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

He has published in numerous scholarly journals, including Journal of Crime and Justice, Justice Quarterly and Crime & Delinquency.

Mitchell received 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.