Laurie O. Robinson joined George Mason University in 2012 as the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and has continued to fulfill this role as an emeritus professor since 2021.

Reflecting that ongoing engagement, she co-chaired the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing from 2014 to 2015. The task force was charged with developing recommendations on ways to build greater trust between law enforcement and citizens in the wake of the national reckoning with policing practices that began in 2014. In 2014-16, she served on the Congressionally created Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, charged with addressing crowding in the federal prison system.

Robinson twice served as a Senate-confirmed, presidentially appointed Assistant Attorney General heading the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, the DOJ’s research, statistics, and criminal justice assistance agency. These two appointments make her the longest-serving head of that agency in its 50-year history. Robinson’s more recent tenure heading the $2.5 billion agency was marked by a focus on science: She set up a Science Advisory Board for OJP and created a national “what works” clearinghouse for the criminal justice field (www.crimesolutions.gov).

Between her stints in government, Robinson was the founding director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Science Program in Penn’s Department of Criminology and served as a Distinguished Senior Scholar in the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology. During her first tenure at the DOJ in the 1990s, she led the federal government’s engagement with states and localities on community-based crime control. She oversaw the largest increase in federal spending on crime-related research in the nation’s history. She also spearheaded major federal initiatives on violence against women, drug treatment courts, and law enforcement technology.

Robinson has served on several national boards, including those of the Constitution Project, the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Law and Justice. She also co-chaired the Research Advisory Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police for many years. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Sheldon Krantz, a lawyer and law professor.