Sally S. Simpson is a Distinguished University Professor (Emerita) of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Former Director of the Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation, & Crime (C-BERC) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include corporate crime, criminological theory, and the intersection between gender, race, class, and crime.
Simpson is former Vice Chair of the NAS Committee on Law and Justice; past co-editor of the journal Regulation & Governance (2020-2023). In 2019-2020 she served as President of the American Society of Criminology. Honors include: 2018 Edwin H. Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology; ASC Fellow; Distinguished Scholar (ASC's Division on Women and Crime), Herbert Bloch Award (ASC), 2013 Gilbert Geis Lifetime Achievement Award (National White-Collar Crime Center and the National White-Collar Crime Research Consortium), and 2010 Woman of the Year by the President's Commission on Women's Issues at the University of Maryland.
Ongoing research examines the corporate criminal career paradigm and organizational life cycle theory; gender diversity, corporate leadership, and corporate crime; and corporate crime data and measurement.
Areas of Interest
- Corporate Crime, Gender and Crime, Measurement of White Collar Crime, Testing Criminological Theory
Degrees
-
Degree TypePh.DDegree DetailsSociology
-
Degree TypeBSDegree DetailsSociology
-
Degree TypeMADegree DetailsSociology
Gender and Crime
With Co-Principal Investigators Julie Horney (Penn State University), Rosemary Gartner (University of Toronto), and Candace Kruttschnitt (University of Toronto), our team collected 3 years of quantitative and qualitative data from more than 800 incarcerated women in Baltimore, Toronto, and Minneapolis. This project (Women’s Experience of Violence or WEV) examines individual, situational, and community factors that are associated with violent offending and victimization. In addition, for Baltimore and Minneapolis respondents, neighborhood census data are linked to individual addresses. In addition, I have examined gender/race differences in violent crime participation; the impact of changes in arrest policies (Maryland) on intimate partner violence and victim perceptions of procedural justice on victim willingness to report future intimate partner victimizations. I typically adopt an intersectional or "doing gender" approach in my work.
Corporate Crime
My long-standing interest in corporate crime can be divided into three main themes: (1) under what conditions are companies more or less likely to violate the law; (2) manager decision-making; and (3) crime prevention and control strategies including formal legal sanctions (administrative, civil, and criminal), corporate governance and self-regulatory mechanisms. Several funded projects have informed these questions, including: (1) the public's willingness to pay for white-collar crime control (with Tom Loughran and Mark Cohen); (2) a report to BJS regarding the feasibility of building a comprehensive white-collar violations data system (with Peter C. Yeager; and (3) the independent and reciprocal relationships between diversity (gender, racial/ethic) in corporate governance, structural board characteristics, top management team diversity, corporate offending, and legal responses to offending (with Debra Shapiro, Christine Beckman, and Gerald Martin), and using behavioral big data to predict physician involvement in fraud (with Ritu Agarwal and Gordon Gao). These projects rely on large archival data sets, systematic review, general population surveys, vignette surveys, or information/data from regulatory agencies. I draw from rational choice/deterrence, informal social control, life-course/organizational life cycle theory, and strain theory to inform the work.
Primary Investigator
Related Students (Listed by Student on Student's Profile)
-
Isabella Castillo
-
Alexandra Smith
