Public Safety
The LCL is embedded within a top tier program at the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology and benefits from the partnerships and expertise that comes along with this affiliation.
A Top-Tier Program
The UCI Department of Criminology, Law and Society – the #2 ranked program in the nation and the #1 ranked online program in the nation – specializes in a number of the pressing issues facing the criminal justice system.
The Center for Evidence Based Corrections is conducting cutting-edge research on – to name but a few topics – prison violence, risk assessments for parolees, and the diversion of juveniles out of the the criminal justice system.
The Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and Crime provides research on topics pertaining to immigration and crime, and re-entry; and provides an annual crime forecast for the Southern California region.
LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees), driven by Professor Keramet Reiter, is a cutting-edge program that offers incarcerated persons an opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree from UCI.
Our CLS faculty are committed to fair and equitable justice, and they have launched Prison Pandemic, a digital archive of stories that highlight the plight of being incarcerated during a pandemic. Additionally, CLS faculty spearheaded an effort to equip people in California prisons with critical PPE during the COVID-19 crisis.
A Director’s Battle
George Tita has for more than two decades worked closely with community members, local organizations, faith-based institutions, and all members of the federal, state, and local criminal justice system to develop, implement and evaluate efforts to reduce gun violence.
His work also includes leading two projects separated by more than a decade to understand the illegal firearms market in Los Angeles. Rather waiting for the “good guy with a gun” to deter future violence, Tita believes that keeping the “bad guy with a gun” from accessing a firearm is central to reducing the unacceptable rates of gun violence in our society.
An advocate for safe storage and addressing the non-reporting of stolen firearms, research by Tita and colleagues have demonstrated the value of focus not on illegal access to firearms, but the importance of keeping prohibited possessors from accessing ammunition.