Faculty
Elizabeth Webster, PhD
Title/s: Assistant Professor
Office #: Mundelein Center, Room 807C
Phone: 773.508.8631
Email: ewebster1@luc.edu
CV Link: E_Webster_2023
About
Dr. Webster joined the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University Chicago in Fall 2018. She studies court operations and courtroom workgroup decision making at every stage of processing, but particularly postconviction. Her research, “A Postconviction Mentality: Prosecutorial Assistance as a Pathway to Exoneration,” which explores prosecutors’ decision making in wrongful conviction cases, was funded by the National Institute of Justice. Her current research projects include defendants’ experiences of bond court, and exonerees’ perceptions of their postconviction legal process. She is a former communications professional at the Innocence Project, and an alum of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice.
Research Interests
Miscarriage of Justice, Criminal Justice Policy, Courts, Corrections, Law and Society, Theories of Crime, Qualitative Research Methods, Crime and the Media, Gender and Crime, Race and Crime
Courses Taught
CJC 201 Theories of Criminal Behavior
CJC 312 Popular Culture and Crime
CJC 372 Race, Ethnicity and Crime
CJC 374 Miscarriages of Justice
Selected Publications
Webster, Elizabeth, Beth Huebner, Alessandra Early, and Luis Torres. Forthcoming. "’Court Can Happen Anywhere’: Courtroom Workgroup Members' Perceptions of the Challenges and Opportunities of a Transformed Workplace." Criminal Justice and Behavior.
Webster, Elizabeth. (2022). “The Postconviction Workgroup: Cooperation Between Adversaries in Exoneration Cases.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 33 (8), 870-890.
Webster, Elizabeth, Kathleen Powell, Sarah Lageson, and Valerio Bacak. (2022). “’Satan’s Minions’ and ‘True Believers’: How Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Employ Quasi-Religious Rhetoric and What It Suggests About Lawyering Culture.” Justice System Journal 43 (1), 53-67.
Webster, Elizabeth. (2020) “The Prosecutor as a Final Safeguard Against False Convictions.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 110-245.
