John H. Laub is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. From July 2010 to January 2013, Dr. Laub served as director of the National Institute of Justice in the Office of Justice Programs in the Department of Justice.
The position of Director is a presidential appointment with confirmation by the United States Senate. Dr. Laub, along with his colleague, Robert Sampson, was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2011 for his research on how and why offenders stop offending. Dr. Laub’s areas of research include crime and the life course, crime and public policy, and the history of criminology.
He has published widely including Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life (Harvard University Press 1993; with Robert Sampson). This book won three major awards: The Albert J. Reiss Jr. Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Crime, Law, and Deviance Section; the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; and the Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology. With Robert Sampson, he wrote Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 (Harvard University Press 2003), which analyzes longitudinal data from a follow-up study of juvenile offenders from a classic study by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck. This book also won three major awards: The Albert J. Reiss Jr. Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Crime, Law, and Deviance Section; the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; and the Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology.
