Stephen D Mastrofski

Emeritus Faculty

Police discretion, police organizations and their reform, systematic field observation methods in criminology

Stephen Mastrofski is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. His research interests include police discretion, police organizations and their reform, and systematic field observation methods in criminology. Prior to his retirement in 2018, Professor Mastrofski led a large team of researchers supporting and evaluating the transformation of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. He served on the editorial boards of seven criminology and criminal justice journals and two international policing journals, was a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Community Oriented Policing, and consulted for a variety of public and private organizations. In 2000 he received the O.W. Wilson Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences for education, research, and service on policing. He served on the National Academies of Sciences panel on Police Services and Practices that published the 2004 book, Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence and the National Academies Committee on Proactive Policing. In 2008 he and his coauthors received the Law and Society Association’s article prize for their article using different organizational theories to explain Compstat’s implementation as a police reform. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and in 2015 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Policing of the American Society of Criminology.