I am a Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where I focus on the intersection of criminal justice, health, and race. Through the lens and tools of an economist, I aim to provide an empirical guide for understanding questions and tradeoffs related to legal and health systems, while exploring the impacts of policies intended to ameliorate them. Some of my work has investigated how high-profile police killings impact police behavior and crime, the effects of California suspending bail during COVID, and racial disparities in police interactions.

My research has been published in places such as The Review of Economics and Statistics, Santa Clara Law Review, and The Cambridge Handbook of Policing in the United States. It has been featured in numerous media outlets, such as Bloomberg, the Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Vox, and has been regularly cited in policy discourse (see Research tab). I received my Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2020.

Google Scholar; Bluesky; Twitter; Email: premkumar@ppic.org