Profile
Paul E. Tracy, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 1978) is a sociologist and criminologist who specializes in the study of crime, delinquency, law, and public policy surrounding the criminal and juvenile justice systems.
Dr. Tracy's research interests focus on the measurement and analysis of juvenile delinquency careers, legal and policy issues in juvenile justice, prediction models of criminal careers, and drug prohibition policy. In particular, Dr. Tracy is an internationally recognized expert in the application of longitudinal research designs to the study of criminal careers. His study of a large Philadelphia birth cohort of 27,160 people, the largest study of delinquency and crime in criminology and is now in its twenty-second year.
The results of Dr. Tracy's Philadelphia study have been published as: Delinquency Careers in Two Birth Cohorts, (with M.E. Wolfgang and R.M. Figlio, 1990); Continuity and Discontinuity in Criminal Careers; (with K. Kempf-Leonard, 1996). He is working with Dr. Kempf-Leonard on another volume of the Philadelphia birth cohort, Gender Differences in Criminal Careers. Dr. Tracy has also conducted a birth cohort project in San Juan, Puerto Rico Delinquency in Puerto Rico: the 1970 Birth Cohort Study (with D. 1990), and was involved in a similar longitudinal study of delinquency in Wuhan Province, People's Republic of China.
Dr. Tracy has published 5 books and numerous scholarly articles in the sociology and criminology literature. His publications have appeared in such journals as the American Sociological Review, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Criminology, Social Science Research, and Evaluation Research. He has a new book in press and two others that are underway.
Dr. Tracy's teaching interests concern the analysis of crime, criminals, and justice system policy. He teaches a roster of courses that focus on delinquency, criminology, juvenile and criminal justice, and drug policy and crime which formed the basis of an undergraduate concentration in "Criminal Justice" which has evolved into a growing baccalaureate program at UT - Dallas in "Crime and Justice Studies."
Dr. Tracy is extensively involved with the Texas Criminal Justice Division, Office of the Governor, in conducting analyses of the juvenile justice system and the parameters of delinquency in Texas and developing appropriate policy responses. Dr. Tracy is a member of the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Task Force.
- Updated: July 26, 2006
