John H. Laub is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. From July 22, 2010 to January 4, 2013, Dr. Laub served as the 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. In 1996, he was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology, in 2002-2003 he served as the President of the American Society of Criminology, and in 2005 he received the Edwin H. Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology. In 2015, he was awarded the Thorsten Sellin Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Dr. Laub, along with his colleague, Robert Sampson was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2011 for their 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, co-authored with Robert Sampson, Harvard University Press, 1993. With Robert Sampson, he wrote Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70, Harvard University Press, 2003, which analyzes longitudinal data from a long-term follow-up study of juvenile offenders from a classic study by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck. Both books have 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.

One of my most recent papers is “Social Control Theory: The Legacy of Travis Hirschi’s Causes of Delinquency,” Barbara Costello and John H. Laub. Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 3, 2020.  https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-criminol-011419-041527