Photo: Jakob Wesslund
In a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall on June 9, Charis E. Kubrin and Mark W. Lipsey received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology from H.M. Queen Silvia. The 2026 prize recognized two scientific myth-busters for comprehensively demonstrating that immigration does not generally transform communities towards higher crime rates, and that rehabilitation programs can function and reduce convicted offenders’ crime rates.
By using both original research and systematic reviews of all relevant research to disprove politically volatile claims, the laureates have improved the awareness of potentially beneficial transformations in crime rates for both communities and individual offenders.
Charis E. Kubrin is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California-Irvine, where she has worked since 2011. She is also co-director of the Irvine Laboratory for Space and Crime, studying all levels of analysis including street segments, blocks, neighbourhoods, cities, counties, and metropolitan areas. A graduate of Smith College, she earned a PhD at the University of Washington.
“You have provided the world with invaluable insight s on how immigration really affects crime or not, and how effects may vary across countries and many other factors. You have discovered unexpected evidence about issues that many have deemed hopeless. Your research has brought new hope to developing more rational strategies for managing immigration in democratic countries around the world,” said in his laudation to Professor Kubrin.
Mark W. Lipsey is Research Professor and Director of the Peabody Research Institute of Vanderbilt University, where he has worked since 1992. A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, he earned a PhD at the Johns Hopkins University.
“You have revealed and spotlighted the truth about well-tested recidivism prevention programs, both in and out of prisons. Your meta-analytics have produced an enormous harvest of evidence for a promised feast of crime prevention. Your work has spread ideas and treatments of adult and youth offenders, reducing suffering from crime harm and imprisonment practices around the democratic world,” said in his laudation to Professor Lipsey.