Areas of Expertise

• Social institutions and crime
• Patterns of crime
• Crime in China
• Homicide

Findings

• Twenty percent of the surveyed inmates were re-incarcerated. MORE
• The likelihood that males are re-incarcerated is four times higher than the rate of females. MORE
• School-level variables had a significant impact on predicted delinquency. MORE
• There is a significant effect of internal attitudinal traits, characterized by excessive ego and focus on individual achievement, on readiness for violence in individuals. MORE
• The results showed that anti-Black hate crimes were tied to geography. MORE
• Anti-Black hate crime rates were highest in the northeast, midwest and in counties along the border across the southern and western parts of the country. MORE

Biography

Steven Messner, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany-SUNY, is an expert in social institutions and crime, crime in China and homicide.

Messner served as a professor at Columbia University and Nankai University in China. He also served as the president of the American Society of Criminology, the chair of the Crime, Law, and Deviance Section of the American Sociological Association and on the executive committee for the Eastern Sociological Society. Messner consulted with organizations including the Health Insurance Plan of New York and the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services. He received awards from organizations including the University at Albany and the Research Foundation of the State University of New York.

Messner has published chapters and articles in scholarly journals and co-authored books including Crime and the Economy, Crime and the American Dream and The Emergence of a New Urban China: Insiders’ Perspectives.

He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Princeton University and B.A. from Columbia University.