Jonathan Simon

Who is Jonathan Simon?

Jonathan Simon is the Associate Dean of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Boalt Hall School of Law at University of California, Berkeley, author of Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear and Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass, 1890-1990, co-editor of Punishment & Society, associate editor of Law & Society Review, and a professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, and Legal Studies. Professor Simon has also been an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and a professor at the University of Miami. He is also the co-author of the theory of the “new penology,” sometimes referred to as “actuarial justice”. His research interests include criminology; penology; sociology; law and society; risk and the law; insurance models of governing risk; governance; the origins and consequences of, and solutions to, the California prison “crisis”; parole; prisons; capital punishment; immigration detention; and the warehousing of inmates.

He maintains several blogs including Governing Through Crime and the Berkeley Jurisprude.