Franklin Zimring

Franklin E. Zimring is an American criminologist and legal scholar who holds the William G. Simon Professorship of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Over a long career he has produced influential empirical and policy research on some of the most contested areas of American criminal justice, including the deterrent effect and administration of capital punishment, the causes and prevention of gun violence, and the appropriate scope of the juvenile justice system, publishing widely used books such as The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment and American Youth Violence. Zimring's work is frequently distinguished by its close attention to how criminal justice data are gathered and interpreted, and by his willingness to challenge conventional wisdom on both punitive and reform-minded sides of debates over crime policy, making him one of the most frequently cited criminologists in American legal and policy scholarship.