Jennifer Doleac

Jennifer Doleac is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Virginia’s Batten School. She is also a Nonresident Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Doleac is an applied micro-economist with particular interests in the economics of crime and discrimination. She is an expert on how technology and surveillance affect public safety, with past and current work addressing topics such as DNA databases, gun violence, and prisoner re-entry. A common theme in much of her work is how technology improves the quality and availability of crime-related data. Her research has been supported the National Institute of Justice, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation, and has been published in leading academic journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics and the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Doleac holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College. She has spoken at Interpol and the White House, and her research on DNA databases was cited in the Supreme Court’s Maryland v. King case. She was an NBER/NSF Crime Research Fellow, and previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Congressional Budget Office.

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Individuals who were formerly incarcerated often face great difficulty in re-entering the labor market after incarceration. A multi-pronged approach—inclusive of effective policies aimed at building workers’ skills, communicating their work-readiness to employers, and promoting robust labor markets for low-skilled workers—is necessary for improving employment outcomes for workers with criminal records. In addition, it is important to consider the potential unintended consequences of regulations that restrict information available to employers.

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