Stockholm Prize in Criminology to Charis E. Kubrin and Mark W. Lipsey

The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is the world’s most prestigious award in the field of criminology. It is awarded annually and amounts to 1.5 million SEK. The international jury announced the winners in a ceremony at Stockholm University on November 11. The awards will be presented next June in Stockholm.

The 2026 prize recognizes two scientific myth-busters for comprehensively demonstrating that immigration does not generally transform communities towards higher crime rates, and that rehabilitation programs can function and reduce convicted offenders’ crime rates. By using both original research and systematic reviews of all relevant research to disprove politically volatile claims, the laureates have improved our awareness of potentially beneficial transformations in crime rates for both communities and individual offenders.

Immigration leading to lower crime rates

The work of Charis E. Kubrin and her colleagues provides unexpected findings, such as immigration leading to lower community crime rates in many cities in the US, Canada and Australia, while reporting more mixed results across Europe. The team also found many studies in which immigrant individuals had lower crime rates in their new communities than native-born residents. These analyses give an abundance of evidence disproving claims that immigration generally, let alone universally, raises crime in communities.

Kubrin’s work has demonstrated the need for greater precision in immigration studies to replace simplistic generalizations. Since her first immigration and crime study in 2009 (with Graham Ousey), she has found important nuances in the relationship between crime and immigration. For example, she showed that the total homicide rates were more often lower in US cities with higher immigration levels, while the gang related homicide was higher. In her most recent work, Kubrin addresses even more policy-relevant nuances that can create differential effects of immigration on crime rates: legal vs. illegal immigrant status, first vs. second generation immigration, economic context and other factors. This research has great potential as a scientific support in policy-making.

Rehabilitation can work for convicted offenders

The work of Mark Lipsey and his colleagues stands up against a major myth on crime: the claim that rehabilitation does not work for convicted offenders. Using the methodology called meta-analysis, the work is renowned for drawing complex conclusions from hundreds of independent studies. Since his first meta-analysis in 1992 analysed 443 separate studies of the effects of rehabilitation programs for juvenile offenders, Lipsey’s work has provided substantial evidence on the benefits of rehabilitative programs for offenders young and old.

Lipsey’s subsequent work found more studies showing similar results in a range of large meta-analyses. Even in comparisons of diverting juveniles from prosecution (but with rehabilitation), against prosecuting them without rehabilitative court sentences, Lipsey reached the same conclusion: that rehabilitation can work if it is provided to offenders, with or without criminal sentences. The policy impact of Lipsey’s work has also been substantial. Many observers credit Lipsey’s work with preserving support for the idea of rehabilitation in various correctional institutions when many leaders had concluded that “nothing works”. His research shows that rehabilitation can work if it is delivered properly according to their scientific designs. Those findings provided further evidence for the claim that inadequate funding of rehabilitation of offenders in and outside institutions will increase crime rates.      

Biographical Details

Charis E. Kubrin is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California-Irvine, where she has worked since 2011. She is also co-director of the Irvine Laboratory for Space and Crime, studying all levels of analysis including street segments, blocks, neighbourhoods, cities, counties, and metropolitan areas. A graduate of Smith College, she earned a PhD at the University of Washington.

Mark W. Lipsey is Research Professor and Director of the Peabody Research Institute of Vanderbilt University, where he has worked since 1992. A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, he earned a PhD at the Johns Hopkins University.