Weisburd, David (1947–)

IN 2003, David Weisburd was a professor and senior research fellow in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, a position held since 2000. Weisburd also held a joint appointment at the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, where he was on the faculty of law. Weisburd obtained his Ph.D. in sociology at Yale University, where he also earned a Master of Philosophy degree in sociology, and a M.A. in sociology. Weisburd earned his B.A. degree in sociology from Brandeis University.

Before his 2003 academic position, Weisburd held a number of posts and visiting positions in the field of criminology and criminal justice, including as a research associate on the well-known Yale Studies in White-Collar Crime at Yale Law School during the periods of 1979–81 and again in 1983–84.

Weisburd has conducted research in several distinct criminal justice topics, including policing, research, and statistical methods, and white-collar crime. He has received numerous grants and fellowships to support his individual and collaborative research projects. One such project was an extensive, National Institute of Justice-funded study to assess sanctioning effects in the area of white-collar criminal careers, under which he served as a co-principal investigator with Ellen Chayet. The research examined whether white-collar offenders shared the characteristics commonly associated with the career criminal and criminal career paradigms, such as onset, prevalence, specialization in offending, frequency of offending, and duration of offending.

This unique study was the first of its kind in white-collar crime, and contributed to a number of[Page 859] significant journal articles and books. Some of his major contributions in this area of research include White-Collar Crime and Criminal Careers (co-authored with Elin Waring and Ellen Chayet in 2001); White-Collar Crime Reconsidered (co-edited with Kip Schlegel in 1992); and Crimes of the Middle Classes: White-Collar Offenders in the Federal Courts (co-authored with Stanton Wheeler, Elin Waring, and Nancy Bode in 1991).