Edward Shihadeh

Professor Louisiana State University

  • Baton Rouge LA

Dr. Shihadeh is an American sociologist and criminologist.

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Louisiana State University

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Biography

Edward S. Shihadeh is an American sociologist and criminologist. He is professor and chair of sociology at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At LSU, he also coordinates the Crime and Policy Evaluation Research Group, which he co-founded with Matthew Lee in 2005. He began his academic career in mathematical demography, but later became interested in researching crime and deviance as they pertained to urban black communities.

Areas of Expertise

Criminology
Urban Sociology
Race, Ethnicity & Immigration

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.

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. “

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‘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.

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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.

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Articles

Latino Paradox or Black Exception? Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in the 21st Century

Societies

2023

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.

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Religious Ecology, Floaters and Crime: The Links Between Social Capital, Institutional Disengagement and Homicide

Deviant Behavior

2017

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.

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Reconsidering the Unusual Suspect: Immigration and the 1990s Crime Decline

Sociological Inquiry

2017

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.

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Event Appearances

Case Study: Louisiana State University & Louisiana Department of Corrections. How to Revolutionize your Model Optimization.

2017 | Predictive Analytics World  Chicago, IL