Edward Shihadeh
Professor Louisiana State University
Areas of Expertise
Biography
Research Focus
Violent Crime & Urban Demography
Dr. Shihadeh’s research focuses on violent crime—especially homicide—and how immigration, racial composition, and neighborhood structure shape violence across U.S. cities. He applies spatial-demographic modeling, crime-mortality databases, and community-level analyses to pinpoint risk clusters and inform evidence-based policing and urban policy.
Answers
- What’s the biggest misconception people have about crime trends today?
One of the biggest misconceptions today is that crime is worse than ever before. In reality, crime rates in the United States have been at historic lows for over a decade. For example, in the early 1990s, the U.S. murder rate exceeded 10 per 100,000 people. Today, that rate is closer to 5 or 6. So, while modern headlines may seem more alarming, the actual level of violent crime is significantly lower than in the past.
Education
Pennsylvania State University
Ph.D.
1992
Accomplishments
hancellor’s Technology Transfer Award, LSU
2015
Distinguished Faculty Award (Excellence in Research, Teaching and Service), LSU
2014
Media Appearances
Stefanski hinges attorney general campaign on fentanyl crackdown
Louisiana Illuminator online
2023-04-25
Edward Shihadeh, a professor of criminology at LSU, expressed concern that more drug laws can lead to more drug crime.
“Sometimes drug enforcement can be used really as an attack against a group,” Shihadeh said. “That’s part of it as well. “
‘The Only Way We Get Out of There Is in a Pine Box’
The Marshall Project online
2021-12-17
“We just got rid of the cheaper ones,” said Edward Shihadeh, a Louisiana State University sociology professor who developed the state’s assessment tool for its incarcerated population. Keeping people in jail for life means the state must pay for them “until the pennies go into their eyes,” Shihadeh said.
Dr. Edward Shihadeh, LSU Criminologist (2019)
PBS Newsmakers online
2019-05-22
A speech by Dr. Edward Shihadeh before the Baton Rouge Rotary Club on May 22, 2019. Dr. Shihadeh is a professor of sociology and criminology at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. He discusses: the state’s high incarceration rate; his $2 million federal grant to overhaul the state’s offender management system; the justice reinvestment initiative; predictive analytics; and his creation of a new risk and needs assessment tool for prisoners and parolees called TIGER. He also answers questions from the audience.
Articles
Latino Paradox or Black Exception? Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in the 21st Century
Societies2023
George Floyd’s murder by a Minnesota police officer sparked outrage, protests, and a re-evaluation of racial inequities in America. Within criminology, we argue, that re-evaluation should include the Latino Paradox, the idea that Latino communities are an exception—a paradox—in that, while they face economic deprivation, they also possess a magical something that makes them resistant to social problems like crime. Unfortunately, this compels the more delicate question; what is the deficiency in Black communities that makes them so vulnerable to crime? However, as we argue here, the Latino Paradox forces a false comparison. Its assumptions with respect to crime are factually incorrect, it demeans Blacks by neglecting their historical context, it romanticizes the Latino experience, and it misdirects policy making. It also leads to lazy theorizing by suggesting that the Latino Paradox forces a re-evaluation of a major criminology theory, Social Disorganization. Indeed, Social Disorganization Theory can adequately explain past and present links between immigration and crime. In light of these problems, it is time to drop the Latino Paradox as an explanation for the race/ethnic differences in crime.
Religious Ecology, Floaters and Crime: The Links Between Social Capital, Institutional Disengagement and Homicide
Deviant Behavior2017
We consider two distinct research streams in macro-criminology. The first is how religious ecology, articulated as bridging and bonding capital, is linked to the rates of violence. The second concerns how institutionally disconnected youth, known as “floaters”, are highly vulnerable to violence because they fall outside the community’s umbrella of social control. Using county-level data on religious ecology, institutional engagement and violence, we connect the two ideas with the following theoretical story line. When a community’s religious ecology is characterized by more bonding capital (versus bridging capital), such places provided fewer institutional entry points for crime-prone youth, thus increasing the proportion of floaters in the area. Because these floaters lack institutional social control, we should observe higher rates of violence as a result. Our analysis offers a social control mechanism by which social capital influences the rates of violence at the macro level. We discuss the implications of our findings.
Reconsidering the Unusual Suspect: Immigration and the 1990s Crime Decline
Sociological Inquiry2017
The United States experienced a dramatic decline in crime during the 1990s. A number of explanations for this decline have been put forth, including demographic shifts, economic trends, stricter gun control laws, and changes in drug markets. A widely reported explanation is that the surge of immigration during the 1990s was the main cause for that decade's crime decline. Although the claim has received considerable attention, it has yet to be tested empirically using national-level data. In order to fully test the immigration-1990s crime decline relationship, we use national-level homicide and Census data from 1990 to 2000. Our results reveal four key findings: (1) crime declined for nearly all groups during the 1990s; (2) non-Latino blacks contributed the most to the crime decline, by a wide margin; (3) both overall and black homicide declined the least in areas with the highest levels of immigration; and (4) we find no evidence that immigration indirectly lowered non-immigrant crime rates by revitalizing communities. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.
Media
