Todd Clear

Dr. Todd R. Clear returned to the faculty of the School of Criminal Justice after serving as provost of Rutgers University—Newark for two years. Previously he served as interim chancellor of RU-N and dean of the School of Criminal Justice.

Clear began his career in academia in 1973 with a faculty appointment at the State University of New York at Albany. Other teaching posts included DePaul University, Ball State University, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, Florida State University, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

An advocate of effectiveness-based policy, Clear's research interests also include community justice, correctional classification, intermediate sanctions, and sentencing policy. He is the recipient of many awards, including those of the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, The Rockefeller School of Public Policy, the American Probation and Parole Association, the American Correctional Association, and the International Community Corrections Association. In May 2011, Clear was elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology.

Clear has served as president of the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice. The author or co-author of 12 books, including Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Community Justice (Wadsworth Press, 2003), Clear also is the founding editor of the journal Criminology & Public Policy.

Clear earned his master's and doctoral degrees at the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany and completed his undergraduate work in sociology at Anderson College in Indiana.

Lecture entitled "The Great American Incarceration Experiment: What Has It Cost Us" delivered in Pensacola, Florida, at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition as part of the Pensacola Lecture Series. Clear explains how the nation’s increasing prison population impoverishes communities, straps municipal budgets, and ineffectively deters criminal behavior.

• Ph.D., University at Albany (1977);
• M.A., Criminal Justice, School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York, Albany (1972);
• B.A., Honors in Sociology, Social Work, Anderson College (1971)

• Clear, T. R.  (in press). Decarceration problems and prospects. Annual Review of Criminology.
• Clear, T. R. (in press). COVID-19 and mass incarceration. Rutgers Law Review.
• Clear, T. R. (in press). Intensive non-intervention. In Moving Sentencing and Corrections Forward: 20 Year Anniversary Collection of the Corrections and Sentencing Division of the American Society of Criminology, Lattimore, P., Heubner, B., & Taxman, F. (eds.). NY: Routledge.
• Clear, T. R. & Montagnet, C. L. (2020). Impact of incarceration on community public safety and public health. In Improving Public Health Through Correctional Health Care. 2nd ed, Greifinger, R. (ed). NY: Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-387-71695-4
• Zgoba, K., & Clear, T. R. (2020). A review of the reality of violent criminal offending and the administration of justice. Criminal Justice Policy Review. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0887403420919471
• Clear, T. R. (2020). Reinventing punitive justice and the community justice system. Asian Journal of Criminology, 15, 185–193. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11417-020-09311-6
• Clear, T. R., & Frost, N. (2020). Coercive mobility in an era of declining prison populations. In Criminal justice theory: Explanations and effects, Johnson, C.L.,  Chouhy, C., & Cochran, J. (eds). Advances in criminological theory, 26. New York: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Criminal-Justice-Theory-Volume-26-Explanations-and-Effects/Chouhy-Cochran-Jonson/p/book/9780367860776
• Clear, T. R., & Frost, N. A. (2013). The punishment imperative: The rise and failure of mass incarceration in America. New York: New York University Press. https://www.academia.edu/29016313/
• Frost, N. A., Freilich, J.D., & Clear, T. R. (eds.). 2009. Contemporary issues in criminal justice policy: Policy proposals for the American Society of Criminology conference. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Issues-Criminal-Justice-Policy-ebook/dp/B00B7LPXUI
• Clear, T. R. (2007). Imprisoning communities: How mass incarceration makes disadvantaged neighborhoods worse. New York: Oxford University Press. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305791.001.0001/acprof-9780195305791