Charles Loeffler

Associate Professor of Criminology

 

Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University, 2011

M.Phil., Criminology, Cambridge University, 2002

A.B., Social Studies, Harvard College, 2001

Research Interests

Professor Loeffler studies life-course criminology, the effects of criminal justice institutions, and topics at the intersection of crime and technology. He is currently conducting research on the effects of criminal record expungement and the effects of processing juveniles as adults. He has recently completed research on the spatiotemporal patterns of gun violence and the prevalence of wrongful convictions among prisoners.

Selected Publications

“Scalable high-resolution forecasting of sparse spatiotemporal events with kernel methods: a winning solution to the NIJ “Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge'” Forthcoming Annals of Applied Statistics (w/M. Chirico, S. Flaxman, and Pau Pereira).

 

“Procrastination and Property Tax Compliance: Evidence from a Field Experiment” The National Tax Journal 72(3): 479-506 (2019)NBER Working Paper 23243 (w/M. Chirico, R. Inman, J. MacDonald, H. Sieg).

 

“Self-Reported Wrongful Convictions Among Prisoners” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 35(2): 259-286 (2019) (w/J. Hyatt and G. Ridgeway).

 

“Pre-Imprisonment Employment Drops: Another Instance of the Ashenfelter Dip?” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 108(4): 815-838 (2018).

 

“Is Gun Violence Contagious? A Spatiotemporal Test,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 34(4): 999-1017 (2018) (w/Seth Flaxman).

 

“Estimating the Crime Effects of Raising the Age of Majority: Evidence from Connecticut,” Criminology & Public Policy 16(1): 1-27 (2017) (w/A. Chalfin).

 

“Indefinite punishment and the criminal-record: Stigma reports among expungement-seekers in Illinois,” Criminology 54(3): 387-412 (2016) (w/Simone Ispa-Landa).

 

“Decriminalizing Delinquency: An Estimate of the Effects of Raising the Age of Majority for a Juvenile Court” Journal of Legal Studies 44(2): 361-388 (2015) (w/Ben Grunwald).

 

“An Experimental Evaluation of Notification Strategies to Increase Property Tax Compliance: Free-Riding in the City of Brotherly Love” NBER Tax Policy and the Economy 30(1): 129-161 (2015) (w/ M. Chirico, R. Inman, J. MacDonald, and H. Sieg).

 

“Processed as an Adult: A Regression Discontinuity Estimate of the Crime Effects of Charging Non-Transfer Juveniles as Adults” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 52(6): 890-922 (2015) (w/Ben Grunwald).

 

“Immigration Enforcement, Policing and Crime: Evidence from the Secure Communities Program” Criminology and Public Policy 13(2):  285-322 (2014) (w/E. Treyger and A. Chalfin).

 

“Detecting Gunshots Using Wearable Accelerometers” PLoS ONE 9(9): (2014).

 

“Does Imprisonment Alter the Life-Course? Evidence on Crime and Employment from a Natural Experiment,” Criminology 51(1): 137-166 (2013).

 

“Punishment’s place: the local concentration of mass incarceration,” Daedalus Summer 2010 (w/R. Sampson).