The School of Criminal Justice Rutgers University – Newark welcomes Brenden Beck to its esteemed faculty this fall. Dr. Beck is a sociologist studying policing, city budgets, housing, and suburbs. A current research project of his investigates how municipal governments shift funding from social services to policing during recessions and how those shifts influence long-term crime rates. His previous research examined how cities’ reliance on fine-and-fee revenue affects their frequency of police killings, how police budget size shapes police practices, and how gentrification and suburbanization affect misdemeanor arrest rates. Dr. Beck has published in the Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, Police Quarterly, the British Journal of Criminology, and elsewhere. He teaches courses on research methods and policing. His general-interest writing has appeared in Slate, the New York Daily News, and the Appeal, among other places. Prior to joining Rutgers, Brenden was an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver and at the University of Florida.

The School of Criminal Justice Rutgers University – Newark welcomes Pilar Larroulet Philippi to its esteemed faculty this fall. Dr. Larroulet’s research focuses on continuity in offending behavior within and across generations, as well as the consequences of interactions with the criminal justice system, with a particular emphasis on gender and incarceration. Prior to joining Rutgers, Pilar served as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the Universidad Católica de Chile. She earned her PhD in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland in 2020.