Charles C. Lanfear
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clanfear.bsky.social
Charles C. Lanfear
@clanfear.bsky.social
340 followers 270 following 95 posts
Associate Professor, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Social control, crime, quant methods, R coding
clanfear.github.io
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clanfear.bsky.social
Charles C. Lanfear @clanfear.bsky.social · Dec 4
Check out our new paper on gun carrying over the life course!
clanfear.bsky.social
Most research in Criminology has serious methods issues, but I take it as an opportunity rather than a source of embarrassment when teaching methods. Helps show value of fundamentals and importance of being a critical consumer of literature.
annemscheel.bsky.social Anne Scheel @annemscheel.bsky.social · 12h
Is this a thing in other fields too?
The (IMO large) bad portion of the psych literature typically violates basic principles that we teach undergrads in intro methods & stats. Feeling increasingly embarrassed when I think of how awful published papers look compared to what I’m asking of my students
February 6, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
cambcriminology.bsky.social
One week left until the first of the Lent Term public seminars, given by Professor @stephenfarrall.bsky.social from the @uniofnottingham.bsky.social, about New Labour's policy on crime and its effect on crime over individuals' life course.

Learn more and book: www.crim.cam.ac.uk/events/explo...
A poster advertising a public seminar by Professor Stephen Farrall.
February 5, 2026 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
jpinasanchez.bsky.social
"Formatting Graphs", with Andrezj Uhl, from Leeds. Andrezj will introduce the art of 'graph retouching', or how to make your graphs more intuitive and effective using simple online tools like Canva. A workshop of interest to all, regardless of data analysis skills. forms.office.com/pages/respon...
February 2, 2026 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
jpinasanchez.bsky.social
Want to know more about the Potential Outcomes Framework? Check out this short course from the @whiteroseuc.bsky.social DTP training team, based on @clanfear.bsky.social’s great presentation during his visit to Leeds.
wrdtp.ac.uk/methods-reso...
February 2, 2026 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
cambcriminology.bsky.social
Join Professor @stephenfarrall.bsky.social for this year's first Lent Term public seminars on 12 February, titled 'The effects of New Labour’s social policy agenda on crime over the life-course'.

Learn more and apply: www.crim.cam.ac.uk/events/explo...
A poster advertising a public seminar by Professor Stephen Farrall.
January 29, 2026 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
georgiatomova.bsky.social
Users of survey data, lovers of DAGs, and general methodological enthusiasts, gather round!

I'm so excited to share this new paper, joint work with my brilliant colleagues @rjsilverwood.bsky.social, @pwgtennant.bsky.social, and Liam Wright.

🧵
How can the use of different modes of survey data collection introduce bias? An introduction to mode effects using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)
Abstract. Survey data are self-reported data collected directly from respondents by a questionnaire or an interview and are commonly used in epidemiology.
academic.oup.com
January 28, 2026 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
chrisuggen.bsky.social
Juvenile Arrest as a Life Course Trap: Being arrested as a juvenile is associated with a 20-30 percentage-point drop in the likelihood of graduating from a 4-year college.

-Garrett Baker, David Kirk, & Rob Sampson, new in SocIology of Education journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
January 27, 2026 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
kasimirdederichs.bsky.social
📊 Analytical Sociologists: just over one week left to submit your abstract for this year’s INAS conference at Nuffield College 📚
We look forward to your contributions! 📄✨ www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/our-research... @nuffieldlibrary.bsky.social @sociologyoxford.bsky.social
January 23, 2026 at 8:05 AM
clanfear.bsky.social
I am now an Associate Professor, which means people from my hometown think I stopped working for a professor but am still in touch with them.
January 17, 2026 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
davidbuil.bsky.social
Paper out with @jpinasanchez.bsky.social & @marcelo-f-aebi.bsky.social in @socialindicators.bsky.social 🔔
How often do we compare crime recorded across countries? We show that crime counting rules vary widely across countries and this strongly affects cross-country comparisons
January 11, 2026 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
ferhattura19.bsky.social
📢 We’re hiring a Lecturer in Criminology & Criminal Justice 📢
Please do share widely 1/3
December 20, 2025 at 5:33 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
pwgtennant.bsky.social
Thrilled to share my latest paper entitled, "Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls"

Led by @jpinasanchez.bsky.social, the paper introduces a framework for examining discrimination in criminal justice processes.

🧵 1/10

publicera.kb.se/ejels/articl...
Screenshot of title page including the following abstract: To minimise confounding bias and disentangle warranted from unwarranted disparities, researchers examining sentencing discrimination have traditionally sought to control for as many legal factors as possible. However, over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have questioned this strategy, noting that many legal factors are themselves subject to judicial discretion and that controlling for them can introduce post-treatment bias. Here, we use directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to provide a formal and comprehensive assessment of the different types of bias that may arise from different choices of controls. In addition, we propose a new modelling framework to facilitate the selection of controls and reflect the model uncertainty created by the trade-off inherent in judicially-defined legal factors and other factors with a similar dual causal role. We apply this framework to examine race disparities in US federal courts and gender disparities in the England and Wales magistrates’ court. We find substantial model uncertainty for gender disparities and for race disparities affecting Hispanic offenders, rendering estimates of the latter inconclusive. Disparities against black offenders are more consistent and — under specific conditions — could be interpreted as evidence of direct discrimination.
December 8, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
lsemethodology.bsky.social
Why do we cooperate with the police & criminal courts?👩‍⚖️

In a new 30-country study, Jon Jackson, Jouni Kuha, @benbradford.bsky.social & Mike Hough find that fair & respectful authority usually beats crime control & fear – but procedural justice power varies by country

👉
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
andrewmorral.bsky.social
Congratulations to @rsbeidas.bsky.social and her team for winning the $5000 Greenwald Award for research on firearm violence prevention for their paper, "Implementation of a Secure Firearm Storage Program in Pediatric Primary Care: A Cluster Randomized Trial"! static1.squarespace.com/static/63924...
static1.squarespace.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
andrewmorral.bsky.social
Congratulations to John J. Donohue and colleagues, whose paper, “Why do right to carry laws increase violence? Effects on gun theft and clearance rates,” was one of two selected for honorable mention by the 2025 Greenwald Award Independent Review Panel! sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Why do right to carry laws increase violence? Effects on gun theft and clearance rates
Since the 1970s most state restrictions on carrying handguns in public have been eased or eliminated. Several of the early impact evaluations of these…
sciencedirect.com
November 26, 2025 at 1:15 PM
clanfear.bsky.social
Very honored by this; thank you Andrew! Wish I could have made it to the conference this year to celebrate! Also, important to note this research was made possible with funding from the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research for the PHDCN's fifth wave.
andrewmorral.bsky.social Andrew Morral @andrewmorral.bsky.social · Nov 26
I also want to congratulate @clanfear.bsky.social, David Kirk and Rob Sampson, whose paper “Dual pathways of concealed gun carrying and use from adolescence to adulthood over a 25-year era of change” was one of two selected for honorable mention by the 2025 Greenwald Award Independent Review Panel!
November 26, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
lsesocialpolicy.bsky.social
Are you a PhD student working on a criminological topic (broadly construed)?

The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is pleased to announce the inaugural PhD Symposium on 18-19 May 2026.

➡️ Find out more about the call for applications here:
Mannheim Centre for Criminology | PhD Symposium 2026
The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is pleased to announce the inaugural PhD Symposium taking place 18-19 May 2026
buff.ly
November 21, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
cambcriminology.bsky.social
We are excited to announce that a new 2-week Executive Programme in Criminology, Sentencing and Justice is starting in September 2026 and is taking applications.

All senior criminal justice professionals are welcome to apply: www.crim.cam.ac.uk/executive-pr...
A photograph of the exterior of the Institute of Criminology, including the 'Criminology' sign above the entrance.
November 14, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
pwgtennant.bsky.social
Epic picture of @clanfear.bsky.social delivering a thunderous introduction to the potential outcomes framework in Leeds last week! Passion emanating from every fibre of his being.

This is what the causal inference movement needs. A joy to behold.
November 11, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
nivette.bsky.social
Do you think about time in criminology? ⏰ Do you think about how we can better specify temporal processes and effects in theory and research? Consider contributing to a new special collection! 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Feel free to send a message if you have any questions!
📣 Call for papers - special collection! 🕰️Rethinking time in developmental criminology The concept of time is integral to developmental and life course criminology. By definition, developmental… | J...
📣 Call for papers - special collection! 🕰️Rethinking time in developmental criminology The concept of time is integral to developmental and life course criminology. By definition, developmental and ...
www.linkedin.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
timnewburn.bsky.social
The Mannheim Centre at the LSE is holding a PhD symposium in May '26. The details are here lse.ac.uk/social-polic... and I would encourage all interested PhD students to apply. Should be a great, great event
Mannheim Centre for Criminology | PhD Symposium 2026
The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is pleased to announce the inaugural PhD Symposium taking place 18-19 May 2026
lse.ac.uk
November 3, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
jkoehler.bsky.social
Are you a PhD student working on a criminological topic (broadly construed)? If so, then please consider applying to the LSE's inaugural criminology PhD Symposium:

www.lse.ac.uk/social-polic...
Mannheim Centre for Criminology | PhD Symposium 2026
The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is pleased to announce the inaugural PhD Symposium taking place 18-19 May 2026
www.lse.ac.uk
November 3, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
profalexstevens.bsky.social
We need two new full-time lecturers in #criminology here at @sheffielduni.bsky.social. One permanent share.google/RuTNSJWfvkuK... and one 12 month maternity cover share.google/xzf5icskztO9...
Lecturer in Criminology at University of Sheffield
Apply for the Lecturer in Criminology role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
share.google
October 18, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by Charles C. Lanfear
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
🚨 New assistant prof job posting at LSE with a focus on crime and criminal justice

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor, , <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span>LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</span></em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><spa...
jobs.lse.ac.uk
October 7, 2025 at 6:19 PM