Bruce Western

Bruce Western is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and President of the Russell Sage Foundation. He previously held the position of Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice and served as Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University from 2018 to 2024. Earlier in his career, Western was the Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government from 2007 to 2018 and Professor of Sociology at Princeton University from 1993 to 2007. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his B.A. (Honors) from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Western's research examines poverty, socioeconomic inequality, and the U.S. criminal justice system, with a focus on the causes, scope, and consequences of mass incarceration. His current and recent projects include serving as Principal Investigator of the Square One Project to reimagine public policy responses to violence amid poverty and racial inequality; a field study of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania state prisons; a randomized experiment evaluating the effects of criminal justice fines and fees on misdemeanor defendants in Oklahoma City; and the Boston Reentry Study. He co-chaired National Academy of Sciences panels on reducing racial inequality in the criminal justice system and on COVID-19 in U.S. prisons. Key publications include Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018), Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), and the co-authored report The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (National Academies Press, 2014). Western is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar. His scholarship has profoundly influenced understandings of incarceration's effects on labor markets, family stability, wage inequality, and disadvantaged communities.

Professional Email: bw2562@columbia.edu