Loretta Stalans, PhD

About

Loretta J. Stalans is a Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology and of Psychology, and Director of the Psychology of Crime and Justice Minor.  She also is an affiliated Professor of Women's Studies and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1990, and has taught at Loyola since 1994. Before coming to Loyola, she was an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Center Fellow at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Georgia State University (1991 to 1994) and a Collaborating Scholar of the American Bar Foundation (1990–1999).

She has written two books, including Penal Populism and Public Opinion: International Perspective Across Five Countries (2004) published by Oxford University Press and co-authored with Roberts, Hough, and Indemaur. She has published extensively in the areas of public opinion about justice, police discretionary decision-making, predicting violent or sexual recidivism, taxpayer compliance, and lay and professionals’ stereotypes or expectations about crime and legal procedures. Her research has been supported through grants from the Ford Foundation, Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, and National Institute of Justice. She has published numerous articles in top refereed academic journals, many book chapters, and several technical and grant reports.  Her research skills are wide-ranging, including qualitative interviewing, coding of narratives, quasi-experimental designs, experiments, vignette survey designs, quantitative analysis, and cutting-edge statistical tools including optimal data analysis, classification tree analysis, and ROC analysis. In all of her classes and mentoring, students are encouraged to help the disadvantaged and to respect the environment.

Research Interests

Contributors to persistent offending

Sanctioning decisions by authorities and the public

Managing stigma and identities of victims and offenders

Gender similarities and differences in offending and in domestic violence

Evaluation and implications of policies and programs 

Courses Taught

CJC 202, Criminal Courts                                  

CJC 205, Research Methods                              

CJC 312, Popular Culture and Crime               

CJC 345, Social Justice and Crime

CJC 346 and 414, Mental Illness and Crime

CJC 373, Intimate Partner Violence

PSYC 372/PSYC 485 and CJC 414, Psychology and Law  (undergraduate and graduate)