Faculty Details

Biography

Daniel S. Nagin is Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics and since January, 2006 has served as the School’s Associate Dean of Faculty. He received his Ph.D. in 1976 from what is now the Heinz School. He is the incoming editor of Criminology and Public Policy, chaired the National Research Council’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, and served as Deputy Secretary for Fiscal Policy and Analysis in the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue from 1981 to 1986.

Nagin is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and of the American Society for the Advancement of Science. He is the 2006 recipient of the American Society of Criminology Edwin H Sutherland Award (for research contributions) and is a 1985 recipient of the Northeastern Association of Tax Administrators Award for Excellence in Tax Administration.

Research

His research focuses on the evolution of criminal and antisocial behaviors over the life course, the deterrent effect of criminal and non-criminal penalties on illegal behaviors, and the development of statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal data. His work has appeared in such diverse outlets as the American Economic Review, American Sociological Review, Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Journal of Sociology, Archives of General Psychiatry, Criminology, Child Development, Demography, Psychological Methodology, Law & Society Review, Crime and Justice Annual Review, Operations Research, and Stanford Law Review. He is also the author of Group-based Modeling of Development (Harvard University Press, 2005).

Selected Publications  

1)    Nagin, D.S.  1978.  “General Deterrence: A Review and Critique of the Empirical Evidence.”  In Deterrence and Incapacitation:  Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.

2)    Nagin, D.S., and Paternoster, R.  1993.  “Enduring Individual Differences and Rational Choice Theories of Crime.” Law and Society Review 27: 467-498.

3)    Manski, C.F., and Nagin, D.S.  1998.  “Bounding Disagreements About Treatment Effects: A Case Study of Sentencing and Recidivism.” Sociological Methodology 28: 99-138.

4)    Nagin, D.S., Rebitzer, J., Sanders, S., and Taylor, L.  2002.  “Monitoring, Motivation and Management: The Determinants of Opportunistic Behavior in a Field Experiment.”  American Economic Review 92: 850:872.

5)    Durlauf, S. N. and D. S. Nagin. 2011. “Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both be Reduced?” Criminology and Public Police 10: 9-54.

6)    National Research Council. 2012. Deterrence and the Death Penalty. Daniel S. Nagin and John V. Pepper (eds.). National Academy Press: Washington, DC.

Developmental Origins of Crime and Violence

7)    Nagin, D.S., and Paternoster, R.  1991.  “On the Relationship of Past to Future Participation in Crime.” Criminology, 29: 163-189.

8)    Nagin, D.S., Farrington, D., and Moffitt, T.  1995.  “Life-Course Trajectories of Different Types of Offenders.” Criminology, 33: 111-140.

9)    Laub, J., Nagin, D.S., and Sampson, R.  1998.  “Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process.” American Sociological Review 63: 225-239.

10)    Nagin, D.S., and Tremblay, R.E.  1999.  “Trajectories of Boys’ Physical Aggression, Opposition, and Hyperactivity on the Path to Physically Violent and Nonviolent Juvenile Delinquency.” Child Development 70: 1181:1196.

11)    Nagin, D.S. and Tremblay, R.E. 2001.  “Parental and Early Childhood Predictors of Persistent Physical Aggression in Boys from Kindergarten to High School.”  Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(4): 389-394.

12)    Broidy, L.M., Nagin, D.S., Tremblay, R.E.,  Bates, J.E.,  Brame, B., Dodge, K., Fergusson, D.,  Horwood, J., Loeber, R. Laird, R., Lynam, D., Moffitt, T.,  Pettit, G.S., and Vitaro, F. 2003.  “Developmental Trajectories of Childhood Disruptive Behaviours and Adolescent Delinquency: A Six Site, Cross-national Study.” Developmental Psychology, 39: 222-245.

13)    Nagin, D.S., and Land, K.  1993.  “Age, Criminal Careers, and Population Heterogeneity: Specification and Estimation of a Nonparametric Mixed Poisson Model.” Criminology 31: 327-362.

14)    Nagin, D.S. 1999.  “Analyzing Developmental Trajectories: A Semi-parametric, Group-based Approach.” Psychological Methods 4: 139-177.

15)    Nagin, D. S. 2005.  Group-based Modeling of Development. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

Education

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, B.S. (Administrative and Managerial Sciences) and M.S. (Industrial Administration), 1971

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, School of Urban and Public Affairs, Ph.D. (Urban and Public Affairs), 1976.

Working Papers

Deterrence in the Twenty-first Century: A Review of the Evidence
Forthcoming Crime and Justice An Annual Review

 A Stata Plugin for Estimating Group-Based Trajectory Models

Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence by a Criminologist for Economists

The Effect of Incarceration on Re-Offending: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Pennsylvania