Shawn D. Bushway, Ph.D.
As a Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University at Albany, Dr. Shawn D. Bushway applies rigorous quantitative methods to study the long-term consequences of criminal justice involvement.
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Shawn D. Bushway: A Criminal Economist
An economist by training—with a PhD in Public Policy Analysis and Political Economy from Carnegie Mellon University — Shawn D. Bushway has spent his career applying an economist's toolkit to the field of criminology. This quantitative and theory-driven approach has allowed him to challenge long-held assumptions and reframe core questions about crime, punishment, and change. His work has earned him recognition as a Distinguished Alumnus from his alma mater, a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and a Distinguished Scholar for the Division of Corrections and Sentencing.
The Central Question: Desistance
At the heart of his career is a fascination with a single, complex process of desistance: the process by which individuals exit, or desist, from offending. He was captivated early on by the mathematical models of criminal careers, but his work soon revealed that the standard methods were creating a misleadingly smooth picture of change. He argues that real, individual-level desistance is often messy and chaotic, and that the "first mover" in the process is almost always the individual's own choice to change.
This focus on individual agency and life trajectories has branched into several research pipelines that, at first glance, might not seem connected:
Background Checks & Employment: His dissertation was one of the first to document how a criminal record could be a barrier to employment. He became a leading expert in a field that, he jokes, initially had only two people. This work culminated in research that became the backbone of the 2012 EEOC guidance on the use of criminal records in hiring—a direct and fulfilling impact on national policy.
Signaling Theory: Instead of treating the fact that people self-select into programs as a statistical nuisance ("selection bias"), he reframes it as an act of agency. Applying economic signaling theory, he argues that completing a difficult program is a credible signal that an individual is committed to change, providing valuable information to employers and others.
Sentencing & Demographics: To understand desistance, he knew he needed to understand the system's role as a potential turning point. This led him to a deep dive into sentencing, including a decade of service on the New York State Permanent Commission on Sentencing. His work with raw prison data led to a major insight: by analyzing trends by birth cohort rather than yearly snapshots, he uncovered a massive, structural decline in crime and incarceration among younger generations that most standard analyses had missed.
A Career of Impact
Across these areas, Bushway has built an influential body of work that includes two books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles, cited more than 20,000 times. His research appears in top journals across disciplines, from Criminology to Nature and Science Advances.
But for him, the goal has always been to participate in the policy debate. He has provided expert testimony to federal and state commissions, consulted with Fortune 50 companies on improving their background check processes, and, with Peter Reuter, co-founded what is now the largest annual conference on the economics of crime—the NBER's summer workshop. He remains an eternal optimist, driven by the belief that good data, even when it challenges the standard narrative, can eventually help build policies that recognize a fundamental fact: that most people can, and do, change.
Bushway Opportunity Score
Bushway Opportunity Score
The Bushway Opportunity Score (BOS) is an evidence-based score to identify good job candidates with conviction records. The BOS helps employers identify candidates who pose little offending risk. Background checks that use the BOS are faster, fairer and more accurate - and they meet EEOC guidelines.
This approach, developed by Dr. Shawn Bushway, has already been used in EEOC-approved settlements by large US companies. The scale replaces cumbersome matrices and minimizes the need for costly individualized assessments.
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