Notable Alumni
It’s a great time to be a Rutgers–Newark School of Criminal Justice graduate. No matter where you live, no matter where you are in life—just beginning your career or just beginning your retirement—our alumni have more opportunities than ever to stay connected to Rutgers and each other. This network means being part of an ever-growing network of achievers who care about their communities and their campus. Connect with the Rutgers University Alumni Association.
Here you will find news about the work of our alumni, ranging from publications and press releases, to awards they’ve been given and programs they’ve developed. Together, we are driven by a passionate concern about problems of crime, public security, inequality, and social justice and aim to apply our knowledge and scholarship to address these challenges. Our interests are as diverse as our backgrounds, our training, and the local environment within which we work.
Policing as Public Health
Why Broken Windows still applies
Anthony A. Braga
City Journal, Winter 2025
Twenty-first-century policymakers profess a deep commitment to “public health,” and they now apply the concept to the problem of violent crime in cities. When Joe Biden took office as president in 2021, for example, he promoted the adoption of public-health interventions to address an uptick of murders; last June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public-health crisis.
These initiatives may be well-intentioned, but they ignore a hard truth. Police departments play a critical role in controlling violent crime and should be part of the public-health approach. Advocates of such an approach to crime tend to be reluctant to engage the police, worried about racially disparate policing and incarceration statistics. Yet the wholesale avoidance of the police works against their goals.
Read the full article.
Anthony Braga
SCJ Class of ’97
Anthony A. Braga is the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology and the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab in the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He collaborates with criminal justice, social service, and community-based organizations to produce high impact scholarship, randomized field experiments, and policy advice on the prevention of crime at problem places, the control of gang violence, and reductions in access to firearms by criminals. With colleagues, Braga has published numerous peer reviewed journal articles in top criminology and criminal justice journals such as Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology; top medical and public health journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Public Health; and top sociology journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and the Annual Review of Sociology. Braga has authored four books and edited nine volumes with top scholarly presses such as the National Academies Press, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press.
Braga has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on projects totaling more than $22 million in external funding from a variety of federal, state, and private grant-making institutions including the U.S. National Institute of Justice, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Arnold Ventures. He has served on four National Research Council committees, mostly recently serving on the Committee on Proactive Policing – Effects on Crime, Communities, and Civil Liberties. Braga is a fellow of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and the 2021 recipient of its August Vollmer Award recognizing his contributions to crime prevention policy and practice. He is also a past president and fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (AEC), and the 2014 recipient of its Joan McCord Award recognizing his commitment to randomized controlled experiments.
The practical value of his work in violence reduction in disadvantaged neighborhoods has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Civic Leadership Award (2004) presented by The Boston Foundation, the United States Attorney General’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Community Partnerships for Public Safety (2009), and the U.S. Department of Justice Project Safe Neighborhoods Research Partner of the Year Award (2010). Between 2007 and 2013, Braga served as Chief Policy Advisor to former Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis and worked with his command staff and line-level officers on award-winning community policing and crime prevention initiatives. Braga holds an M.P.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers University.