About Us

The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) is a research and education organization dedicated to conducting academic quality research on the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety; educating the public on the results of such research; and supporting other organizations, projects, and initiatives that are organized and operated for similar purposes. It has 501(C)(3) status, and does not accept donations from gun or ammunition makers or organizations such as the NRA or any other organizations involved in the gun control debate on either side of the issue.  Nor do we accept donations from organizations involved in the debate over illegal immigration.

Our goal is to provide an objective and accurate scientific evaluation of both the costs and benefits of gun ownership as well as policing activities.

Goals

• Advance the scientific understanding of policing as well as the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety.
• Improve the awareness and knowledge of this scientific understanding among the public, journalists, and policymakers.
• Enhance public safety through these scientific advances and improved awareness and knowledge.

Core Activities

CPRC accomplishes these goals through a core set of activities that include:

• Conducting and publishing academic quality research on the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime and public safety.
• Supporting affiliated academics in conducting and publishing similar research by means such as providing direct financial support, sharing data, and providing technical assistance.
• Educating the public, journalists, and policy makers on the results of research on these issues by means such as books, public lectures, newspaper columns, academic seminars, and information briefings.
• Making research and data available to researchers, the public, policy makers, and journalists by maintaining a comprehensive website.
• Engaging in other related activities consistent with the mission and goals of CPRC.

President

CPRC was founded by Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., an economist and a world-recognized expert on guns and crime.  During the Trump administration, he served as the Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and then the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Lott has held research or teaching positions at various academic institutions, including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, UCLA, and Rice University, and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988-1989. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman noted: “John Lott has few equals as a perceptive analyst of controversial public policy issues.”

Lott is a prolific author for both academic and popular publications. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and written ten books, including “More Guns, Less Crime,” “The Bias Against Guns,” and “Freedomnomics.” His most recent books are “Dumbing Down the Courts: How politics keeps the smartest judges off the bench” and “Gun Control Myths.”

He has been one of the world’s most productive and cited economists (from 1969 to 2000, he ranked 26th worldwide in terms of quality-adjusted total academic journal output, 4th in terms of total research output, and 86th in terms of citations). Among economics, business, and law professors, his research is currently the 15th most downloaded worldwide. He is also a frequent writer of op-eds.

Lott can be reached at [email protected].

Research Director

Carl Moody is a Professor of Economics at William & Mary and has a joint appointment with the college’s Applied Statistics faculty. He has published extensively on the relationships between guns, crime, and imprisonment in such academic journals as Criminology, Homicide Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. He has published papers on both sides of the gun control debate. Moody has co-authored research with the CPRC on policing and empirical work on right-to-carry laws here and here. He teaches mathematical economics and econometrics.

Moody can be reached at [email protected].

Executive Director

Laura Liberty has been involved in PR, political lobbying, and management for many years. While the CPRC doesn’t do political lobbying, we can definitely use her other skills. She can be reached at [email protected]

Director of Data Collections & Translations

Margarita Masiukova-Robl is a Moscow State University graduate. She speaks English, Russian, German, Thai, and Cambodian. She has worked as a translator in international conventions from Bangkok, Thailand, to Cologne, Germany, Cannes, France, and Las Vegas.

Margarita can be reached at [email protected]

Academic Advisory Board

William M. Landes is the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Mr. Landes has written widely on applying economics and quantitative methods to law and legal institutions, including multiple victim public shootings, hijacking of airplanes, and the bail system. Landes has been an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics (1975–1991) and the Journal of Legal Studies (1991–2000), is past president of the American Law and Economics Association, and is a member of the American Economic Association, the Mont Pelerin Society, and the Council of Economic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

J. Scott Armstrong is a professor at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is internationally known for his pioneering work on forecasting methods. Most recently, his research activities have involved forecasting for terrorism and conflicts. He is the author of Long-Range Forecasting, the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods. He co-founded the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, the International Symposium on Forecasting, and forecastingprinciples.com. He is a co-developer of new methods, including rule-based forecasting, causal forces for extrapolation, simulated interaction, structured analogies, and the “index method.” In addition to forecasting, Professor Armstrong has published papers on survey research, educational methods, applied statistics, social responsibility, strategic planning, and scientific peer review.

Timothy Craig Allen, M.D., J.D. is Professor of Pathology and Chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and is Director of the Center for Pulmonary Pathology. He is certified by the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, with added qualification in Cytopathology. Dr. Allen holds the Doctor of Law with Honors degree from the University of Chicago Law School and has practiced health care law and litigation. He is a former Deputy Medical Examiner for Galveston County, Texas. Dr. Allen is a former University of Texas Medical Branch’s Institute of Medical Humanities member. He serves on the Board of Governors of the College of American Pathologists, is past president of the Texas Society of Pathologists and the Pulmonary Pathology Society, and is past chair of the University of Texas System Faculty Advisory Council. He has authored and coauthored numerous articles and book chapters on pulmonary pathology and medicolegal issues and has coauthored and co-edited several books on pulmonary pathology. Dr. Allen is an associate editor of the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and series co-editor of the Advances in Surgical Pathology series. Dr. Allen serves on several medical industry advisory boards.

Arthur Z. Berg, M.D. is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and former APA Violence Task Force member. He was founding Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Beverly Hospital (emeritus) and former Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. A recent article that Dr. Berg had in the Wall Street Journal on multiple victim public shootings is available here.  In 2014, he also wrote an op-ed in the New York Post with John Lott, which is available here.

Edgar Browning — Professor Browning is one of the top public finance economists in the world, and he is a professor at Texas A&M University.  He is the author of the book, Stealing from Each Other: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit (Praeger, 2008). He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.  His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of Public Economics, National Tax Journal, Public Finance Quarterly, American Economic Review, and Journal of Political Economy. His other books include Microeconomic Theory and Applications (with Mark Zupan) and Public Finance and the Price System (with Jacqueline M. Browning).

Tim Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He holds appointments in the political science and economics departments at the university. In 1987, he received his B.S. in Mathematical Sciences from Stanford University. In 1992, he received his PhD from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is the author of over two dozen scholarly articles as well as the book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. Given the extensive media bias on guns, Professor Groseclose’s expertise on identifying media bias will be important. He contributes to the blog, www.Ricochet.com, and is an active tweeter at @Tim_Groseclose (https://twitter.com/Tim_Groseclose). You can learn more about him and his writings at www.timgroseclose.com.

Jonathan M. Karpoff is the Washington Mutual Endowed Chair in Innovation Professor of Finance at the University of Washington Foster School of Business. Karpoff has published pathbreaking research on corporate crime and punishment as well as corporate governance. He is the associate editor for the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Managerial and Decision Sciences, and The North American Journal of Economics and Finance. He has received a long list of academic awards.

Joyce Lee Malcolm is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University Law School. She has a Ph.D. in history and is internationally known for her books Guns and Violence: The English Experience, Harvard University Press (November 24, 2004), and To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, Harvard University Press (March 2, 1996). Guns and Violence provides a comprehensive history and examination of changes in murder rates in England from the Middle Ages to the current day. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and she has held positions at Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cambridge University. Malcolm also served as the Director, Division of Research Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities during 2005-2006.

Scott E. Masten is a Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, where he has been a faculty member since 1984. A leading scholar in transaction cost economics, Professor Masten’s research focuses on issues at the intersection of law, economics, and organization. In addition to his primary appointment, he has held appointments as the Louis and Myrtle Moskowitz Research Professor in Business and Law at Michigan, John M. Olin Faculty Research Fellow at Yale Law School, John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School, and Visiting Professor in the University of Michigan Law School. He was President of the International Society for New Institutional Economics in 2008-09, is a co-editor of the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization and Managerial and Decision Economics.

Carl Moody, Professor of Economics, William & Mary. Professor Moody has published extensively on the relationships between guns, crime, and imprisonment in such academic journals as Criminology, Homicide Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. Moody has co-authored research with the CPRC on policing and empirical work on right-to-carry laws here and here. He teaches mathematical economics and econometrics.

Paul H. Rubin is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics at Emory University, and Editor in Chief of Managerial and Decision Economics. He has been president of the Southern Economic Association. His research interests have included crime, the death penalty, and gun control. He received his B.A. from the University of Cincinnati in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1970. He is a Fellow of the Public Choice Society, a Senior Fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, and former Vice President of the Southern Economics Association. Dr. Rubin has been Senior Staff Economist at President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Director of Advertising Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, and vice-president of Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants, Inc., a litigation consulting firm in Washington.

Adjunct Fellows

C. Bret Jessee, a senior fellow with the CPRC, is also a research director in the biomedical industry, working in the areas of trauma and reconstructive surgery. He received his PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University in 1986 and did post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and The University of Rochester. Bret’s recent industry research projects include quantitative studies of conflict of interest in the surgical products medical literature and bias in the peer review process attributable to medical research funding. Bret can be reached at [email protected].

Dr. Kesten C Green, a senior fellow with the CPRC, is a researcher at the University of South Australia Business School. Kesten has developed forecasting methods that have led to improvements in predicting decisions people in conflicts. He conducts research on forecasting for business and for public policy. His research has been covered in the Australian Financial Review, the London Financial Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has advised the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and more than 50 other business and government clients. With Scott Armstrong, Kesten is co-director and co-owner of the Forecasting Principles public service Internet site (ForPrin.com), the leading online resource for scientific forecasting. Kesten’s CV with links to copies of his research papers is available from kestencgreen.com.  He has co-authored op-eds with John Lott available here.  Kesten can be researched at [email protected].

Amanda Collins Johnson, a fellow with the CPRC, survived a violent rape in a gun-free zone. While she had regularly carried a concealed handgun, she was denied the ability to defend herself because the University of Nevada did not allow permitted concealed weapon on campus. Amanda is the author of the new book: Beyond Survival: Reclaiming My Life After I Survived Rape, which describes her journey of learning how to live after surviving the attack and the lessons that she has learned. She has given talks at college campuses, women’s conferences, and law enforcement conferences. She has also appeared on such shows as Fox and Friends and The Glenn Beck show. Amanda can be reached at [email protected]

Jack McCauley is a fellow with the CPRC and a private consultant on Public Safety and Crime Enforcement Strategies.  Jack is a retired Captain from the Maryland State Police with 23 years of service.  Jack spent the majority of his career as a criminal investigator and manager of several elite investigative units.  Jack managed hundreds of death investigations as a Homicide Investigator and later commanded the Gang Enforcement Unit and the Firearms Enforcement Unit.  Prior to leaving the Maryland State Police in 2013, Jack was the Commander of the State Police Firearms Licensing Division.  Since his retirement, Jack McCauley has worked to share his experiences as the manager of several investigative units whose sole mission was to develop and implement enforcement strategies to combat violent crime.  He is currently working to help educate Maryland lawmakers and various citizen groups on the true causes of violence.

John Swaney, a senior fellow with the CPRC. Swaney researches firearms and crime. He has worked with the Utah Sports Shooting Association.

General Information

General requests for information can be obtained at [email protected].

Board of Directors

Edgar Browning — Professor Browning is one of the top public finance economists in the world and he is a professor at Texas A&M University.

Timothy Craig Allen, M.D., J.D. — Dr. Allen serves on the Board of Governors of the College of American Pathologists; and is past president of the Texas Society of Pathologists and the Pulmonary Pathology Society, and past chair of the University of Texas System Faculty Advisory Council. Professor of Pathology and Chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and is Director of the Center for Pulmonary Pathology.

Joseph E. Olson, J.D. — has been a Professor of Law (now Emeritus) at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota since 1974.  He attended Duke Law School graduating with Honors and was selected for the Order of the Coif. He has an extensive academic publication record on firearms law.

Tracey Wyatt, Treasurer — a graduate of the Tuck Business School

Lars Larson — radio talk show host

Theodore Wold — was the acting assistant attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under President Donald Trump.  He previously served as Deputy Chief Counsel to United States Senator Mike Lee on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He holds a B.A. from Georgetown University, where he studied government and English; an M. Litt. from the University of St. Andrews, where he studied English literature; and a J.D. from the University of Notre Dame.  Mr. Wold clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for Judge Janice Rogers Brown and the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico for Judge José Antonio Fusté.  Mr. Wold is a Visiting Fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.

Sheriff David Clarke — Former Sheriff for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin

Research Associates

Rujun Wang at [email protected]

Organization

CPRC is a Colorado non-profit corporation.  CPRC has 501(C)(3) status with the IRS.  In keeping with 501(c)3 status, CPRC will focus on research and education.

Address:Crime Prevention Research Center
1100 W Kent Ave (P.O. Box 2293)
Missoula, MT 59801

Past Presidents

Andrew Pollack spent his career as a small businessman in scrap metal and real estate, but after his daughter Meadow was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, he dedicated his life to finding answers and preventing future tragedies. Contrary to the national media narrative, Pollack learned that gun control laws had nothing to do with why that mass shooting happened. It was systemic failures in public institutions caused by misguided liberal policies. “The people who blame the gun before they learn the facts,” Pollack says, “are a big part of what people call the ‘root cause’ of mass shootings and violent crime. At the Crime Prevention Research Center, I will focus on finding and disseminating the facts. On saving lives, not on partisan talking points.”

Dr. Robert F. Turner holds both professional (JD) and academic (SJD) doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law, where in 1981 he cofounded the Center for National Security Law—the world’s first think tank specifically focused on issues of national security law.  He is a former three-term chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security and for many years edited the ABA National Security Law Report.  Turner also chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society for many years and currently serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law.

As a University of Virginia professor for over three decades, Turner taught in the Department of Politics and the School of Law. His 1700-page doctoral dissertation was on “National Security and the Constitution.” At the time of his retirement from the Law School earlier this year, Professor Turner was a Distinguished Fellow at the Center.

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