Professor Blumstein's research over the past twenty years has covered many aspects of criminal justice phenomena and policy, including crime measurement, criminal careers, sentencing, deterrence and incapacitation, prison populations, flow through the system, demographic trends, juvenile violence and drug-enforcement policy.
Before joining Heinz College in 1969, Professor Blumstein was at the Institute for Defense Analyses, where he was Director of the Office of Urban Research and a member of the Research Council. In the mid-'60s, he was Director of the Science and Technology Task Force for the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Washington, D.C.
Prof. Blumstein was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice from its founding in 1975 until 1986. He served as chairman of that committee between 1979 and 1984, and also has chaired the committee's panels on Research on Deterrent and Incapacitative Effects, Sentencing Research, and Research on Criminal Careers. He was a member of the Academy's Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education from 1994 to 2000. Prof. Blumstein also served from 1979 to 1990 as chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the state's criminal justice planning agency, and as a member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing from 1986 to 1996.