John Pfaff

John Pfaff is a Professor of Law where he teaches criminal law, sentencing law, and law and economics. Before coming to Fordham, he was the John M. Olin Fellow at the Northwestern University School of Law and clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Professor Pfaff's research focuses primarily on empirical matters related to criminal justice, especially criminal sentencing. He has paid particular attention to trying to understand the causes of the unprecedented 40 year boom in US incarceration rates. His recent work has illuminated the previously-underappreciated role that prosecutorial discretion has played in driving up prison populations.

The second looks at how to incorporate evidence based practices into the judicial review of scientific and empirical evidence. For his work on this issue Professor Pfaff received a two-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation and the University of Chicago's Arete Initiative for the study of wisdom.

Education

University of Chicago: BA, 1997; JD, 2003; PhD (Economics), 2005

Representative Publications

Books

• Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, Hachette Book Group (2017)

• Sentencing Law and Policy, Foundation Press (2015)

Book Chapters

• "Gary Becker," in Pioneers of Law and Economics, edited by Joshua Wright & Lloyd Cohen (2009)

Published and Forthcoming Papers

• "The Incentives of Private Prisons," 52 Ariz St L J 991 (2021). Link is this: https://arizonastatelawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/10-Pfaff.pdf
• "Why the Policy Failures of Mass Incarceration Are Really Political Failures," 104 Minn L Rev 2673 (2020). 
• Theories of Mass Imprisonment no longer forthcoming: is 2020
• "Reckless-Dinitz Lecture: Decarceration's Blindspots," 16 Ohio St J Crim Law 253 (2020). Link is this: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/88017/OSJCL_V16N1_253.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
• "A Second Step Act for the States (and Counties, and Cities)", 41 Cardozo L Rev 151 (2019). Link is this: http://cardozolawreview.com/a-second-step-act-for-the-states-and-counties-and-cities/
• "It's About Quality: Private Confinement Facilities in Juvenile Justice" (with Jeffrey A. Butts), 18 Criminology & Pub Pol'y 361 (2019). Link is this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12435
• "Prosecutors Matter: A Response to Bellin's Review of Locked In." 116 U Mich L Rev Online (2018). Link is this: https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=mlr_online
• "Theories of Mass Imprisonment,” in CRIMINAL JUSTICE THEORY: EXPLANATIONS AND EFFECTS, edited by Cecilia Chouhy et al. (forthcoming 2018).
• Criminal Punishment and the Politics of Place, 45 FORDHAM URBAN L J 571 (2018)
• “Prosecutorial Guidelines,” in REFORMING CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Vol. 3, edited by Erik Luna (2017)
• The Need for Prosecutorial Guidelines,” in POLICING AND PUNISHMENT: PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS AND POLICY SOLUTIONS, edited by Chris Suprenant (2017)
• The Complicated Economics of Prison Reform, 114 Mich L Rev 951 (2016) (invited book review)
• Federal Sentencing in the States: Some Thoughts on Federal Grants and State Imprisonment, 66 HASTINGS L J 1567 (2015) (invited symposium piece)
• The War on Drugs and Prison Growth: Limited Importance, Limited Legislative Options, 52 Harv J Legis 173 (2015) 
• Escaping from the Standard Story: Why the Conventional Wisdom on Prison Growth is Wrong, and Where We Can Go from Here, 26 Fed Sent Rptr 265 (2014) 
• Waylaid by a Metaphor: A Deeply Problematic Account of Prison Growth (Reviewing Ernest Drucker: A Plague of Prisons), 111 U Mich L Rev 1087 (2013)
• The Micro and Macro Causes of Prison Growth, 28 Ga St U L Rev 1239 (2012) 
• The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity: Evidence from the National Corrections Reporting Program, 13 Am Law & Econ Rev 491 (2011) 
• The Durability of Prison Populations, 2010 U Chi Legal Forum 73 (2010).
• The Future of Appellate Sentencing Review: Booker in the States, 93 Marquette L Rev 683 (2009) 
• The Challenge of Designing Quality Guidelines for Observational Research, AUSTRALASIAN EVALUATION SOCIETY CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS (2009)
• “Gary Becker,” in PIONEERS IN LAW AND ECONOMICS, edited by Joshua Wright and Lloyd Cohen (2009)
• The Empirics of Prison Growth: A Critical Review and Path Forward, 98 J Crim L & Criminology 547 (2008)
• The Vitality of Voluntary Guidelines in the Wake of Blakely v. Washington: An Empirical Assessment, 19 Fed Sent Rep 202 (2007) 
• The Continued Vitality of Structured Sentencing Following Blakely: The Effectiveness of Voluntary Guidelines, 54 UCLA L Rev 235 (2006)

Working Papers and Works in Progress

• Truth in Sentencing Laws and the Limited Role of the Federal Government (working paper)

Other Publications

• "Reform School: Five Myths About Prison Growth Dispelled." Slate, February 19, 2009.
• "It's the Media, Not Juveniles, Who Are Delinquent: A Panic About Names." Huffington Post, February 3, 2009.

The links below are to a series of posts I put up at Prawfsblawg about the need for more rigorous systematic reviews in the social sciences and how to incorporate them into the legal system.

An outline of the entire argument

I. The Need for Systematic Reviews

• Recent changes in how empirical work is done

The problems with the structure of empirical social sciences

• A bad philosophy of science

• The flaws with hypothesis testing

• A summary of the need for, and challenges faced by, evidence based practices in the social sciences

Measuring methodological quality of empirical studies

• How do we define quality?

• How do we measure a particular definition of quality?

II. Incorporating Systematic Reviews Into the Law

• The law’s and the sciences’ different views on knowledge

• The problems of epistemic competence in the law

Reconciling systematic reviews with the goals of adversarialism

• Overview

• Truth discovery and non-arbitrariness

• Conflict resolution and party control

• Who gets to decide on how the reviews are written

Historical trends in the nature of adversarial procedures

• The sciencization of the law

• Inquisitorial institutions in American history

• Being more honest about scientific uncertainty

III. Other Related Posts

• Why leaving decisions to individual judgment is not necessarily fair

• A positive example of actuarialism in criminal policy

• Rhetorical concerns with evidence based medicine