Kevin Drakulich

Associate Director and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice; PhD Program Director; Director of Race and Justice Lab

Professor Kevin Drakulich’s work is concerned with how Americans think about crime and justice, both within communities and as tied to broader social issues. In this work he has a particular focus on dynamics of race and racism. At the local level, these questions are critical to understanding social processes relevant to crime and justice. More broadly, this work sheds light on the political processes relevant to crime and justice policy. His current work focuses on three broad questions: 1) how context influences perceptions of crime and justice, 2) how perceptions of crime and justice influence political behavior, and 3) how racial and intersectional threat influence perceptions of crime and justice. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, engaging with the field of criminology, sociology, law and society, and political science.

Professor Drakulich is a 2014 recipient of the National Institute of Justice’s W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship as well as the 2014 New Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of People of Color and Crime. In 2016 and 2023, the students of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice awarded him the Robert Sheehan Excellence in Teaching Award.

View CV

Awards & Honors

Robert Sheehan Excellence in Teaching Award, 2016 Northeastern University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
New Scholar Award, 2014, American Society of Criminology, Division of People of Color and Crime
W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow, 2014, National Institute of Justice

Selected Publications

Open access or open view:

Drakulich, Kevin M. 2023. “Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Reform.” American Journal of Criminal Justice. Invited for special issue on ‘Criminal Justice Reform.’ 47(6): 1166-1185.

Drakulich, Kevin, Eric Rodriguez-Whitney*, and Jesenia Robles*. 2022. “A Subtle but Vital Shift in Focus: Why White Americans More Frequently Fail to View the Police Critically.” Du Bois Review.

Drakulich, Kevin, and Megan Denver. 2022. “The Partisans and The Persuadables: Public Views of Black Lives Matter and the 2020 Protests.” Perspectives on Politics, 20(4): 1191-1208.

Other recent work:

Drakulich, Kevin, Jesenia Robles*, Eric Rodriguez-Whitney*, and Cassidy Pereira*. 2022. “Who Believes that the Police Use Excessive Force? Centering Racism in Research on Perceptions of the Police.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(1): 112-164.

Drakulich, Kevin, and Brandon M. Craig*. 2022. “How Intersectional Threat Shapes Views of Gun Policy: The John Wayne Solution.” Social Problems. Early online 3/18/22.

Drakulich, Kevin, Kevin H. Wozniak, John Hagan, and Devon Johnson. 2021. “Whose Lives Mattered? How White and Black Americans Felt About Black Lives Matter in 2016.” Law & Society Review 55: 227-251.

Drakulich, Kevin, Kevin H. Wozniak, John Hagan, and Devon Johnson. 2020. “Race and policing in the 2016 presidential election: Black Lives Matter, the police, and dog whistle politics.” Criminology 58(2): 370-402.