Media | Robert J. Sampson

Selected Media

Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	"Marked by Time: In a Nutshell; The Wide Angle; A Close Up"	Rorotoko	Jun 2026
Video	Does When We’re Born Make Us Who We Are?: A conversation with the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik	Vital City, NYU Wagner School, and Russell Sage Foundation	Apr 2026
Video	What Creates Criminals? A conversation with Glenn Loury & Robert Sampson	The Glenn Show	Apr 2026
Podcast	"Societal Change and Criminology with Robert J. Sampson" Interview	Talk Nerdy	Mar 2026
Podcast	"Is ‘when we are’ who we are?" Interview	WBEZ Chicago	Mar 2026
Article	"Criminal Risk Assessment and the Character Trap."	Vital City	Feb 2026
Article	"A surprising theory for why some people become criminals."	Boston Globe, by Abdallah Fayyad	Feb 2026
Article	Rethinking Criminal Justice Policy	Harvard University Press Features	Feb 2026
Article	"New factor in predicting who becomes criminal: when you were born." Interview	Harvard Gazette, by Christy DeSmith	Feb 2026
Podcast	"When You Were Born Matters More Than You Think."	The Next Big Ideas Club: Book of the Day, by Michael Kovnat	Feb 2026

Birth Lottery of History and Social Change

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Podcast	Professor Sampson on “The Birth Lottery of History”	London School of Economics Podcast	Oct 2023
Article	How birth year predicts exposure to gun violence.	Harvard Gazette, by Christy DeSmith	May 2023
Article	How social change brings bias to predictive models used in criminal justice settings.	Harvard Gazette, by Christy DeSmith	Jun 2023

Gun Violence and Carrying

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	How Boston became the safest big city in America	The Economist	Sep 2024
Podcast	Study shows impact of gun violence on Chicago residents. Interview with John Williams	WGN Radio	May 2023
Article	Black and Hispanic people in Chicago exposed to gun violence at ‘significantly and persistently higher rate,’ report says	CNN, by Nicole Chavez	May 2023
Article	Over half of all native Black and Hispanic Chicagoans witness a shooting by age 40, study suggests.	ABC News, Nakylah Carter	May 2023
Article	How race, gun ownership, and feelings about Black Lives Matter shape Americans’ views of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack	Harvard Gazette, by Juan Siliezar	Jul 2022
Article	IDEAS: Murders Are Rising the Most in a Few Isolated Precincts of Major Cities	Wall Street Journal	May 2021
Article	Chicago’s Murder Problem	New York Times	May 2016

Neighborhood Inequality and Neighborhood Effects

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Video	How Neighborhood and Life-Course Research Informs Criminal Justice Reform	Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science	Feb 2022
Video	Neighbourhood Disadvantage, Everyday Urban Mobility, and Well-Being	Bradford Hill Seminar, University of Cambridge	Feb 2022
Article	A neighborhood’s well-being depends not only on its own socioeconomic conditions but on those of the neighborhoods its residents visit and are visited by: New study measures neighborhood inequality and violence based on everyday mobility.	Harvard Gazette	Mar 2021
Article	Why some low-income neighborhoods are better than others	Science News
Article	Unpacking the power of poverty	Harvard Gazette
Article	Toxic Inequality	Harvard Gazette	2017
Article	To Advance Sustainability, Fight Inequality	Harvard Gazette	2017
Article	The Persistent Inequality of Neighborhoods	The Atlantic CITYLAB, Richard Florida	Dec 2016
Article	Electing to Ignore the Poorest of the Poor	New York Times, Eduardo Porter	Nov 2015
Article	Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses compounded deprivation and criminal justice in The Atlantic. See The Black Family and Mass Incarceration.		Oct 2015
Video	"Neighborhood Effects and the Contemporary City"	Chicago Ideas Week lecture	Oct 2012
Article	"Can this Chicago community be saved? Hope rises in Englewood."	Christian Science Monitor	Sep 2013
Article	"Can $86 Million Save a Neighborhood?"	Chicago Magazine	Feb 2013
Article	"A moving lift for poor families: Housing vouchers gave impoverished single mothers emotional but not economic benefits."	Science News	Sep 2012
Article	"Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback."	New York Times	Oct 2010
Article	"Living in Disadvantaged Neighborhood Equivalent to Missing a Year in School."	Havard Science	Dec 2007

Housing, Segregation, and Urban Mobility

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Video	Implications of Everyday Urban Mobility for Structural Connectedness, Inequality, and Well-being in Contemporary Cities.	Presentation at the Mobile Tartu 2022 Conference	Jun 2022
Video	Data Shows Racial Split in How People Move Around Boston. What's the Impact?	WGBH News, November 2, 2021, and PBS radio, Greater Boston (starting at 1:15:45).	Nov 2021
Article	Where white people go, where Black people go: Cellphone data reveals how segregated Bostonians are in their movements	Boston Globe	Oct 2021
Article	"Chicago's Awful Divide."	The Atlantic, Alana Semuels	Mar 2018
Article	Who Will Pay the Political Price for Affordable Housing?	New York Times	Jul 2015
Podcast	HUD Stepping up Efforts to Integrate Neighborhoods.	Chicago Public Radio	Jul 2015
Article	Obama Administration to Unveil Major New Rules Targeting Segregation across U.S.	Washington Post	Jul 2015

Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Video	Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect: Book lecture	University of Southern California	Mar 2014
Article	Division Street, USA	New York Times	Oct 2013
Podcast	Interview on "Thinking Allowed"	BBC Radio	Dec 2013
Podcast	"All in the Neighborhood"	Remapping Debate	Dec 2013
Article	Q&A: Robert Sampson, social scientist, on how neighborhoods shape our lives	SmartPlanet, by Christina Hernandez	Nov 2013
Article	Social Infrastucture	The City Resilient conference, Brooklyn, NY	Jun 2013
Article	"The Enduring Importance of Neighborhoods: A Sense of Trust is Key to Making Urban Neighborhoods Thrive"	Discover Magazine, by Dan Hurley	Apr 2013
Article	"Kind Neighbors Are Scarce, but Important"	The Atlantic, by Lindsay Abrams	Mar 2013
Video / Podcast	Great American City featured in a story about a neighborhood in Chicago under challenge: “Diagnosis: Battered but Vibrant.” See also "Saving Chatham," "Chatham's Community Character," and the associated podcast "Hanging On in Chicago"	The New York Times	Jan 2013
Article	"Homicide, Social Efficacy, and Poverty in Chicago" and "Does Segregation Make a City More Vulnerable to Crime?"	Chicago Magazine	Jan 2013
Article	"The Neighborhood Effect"	Chronicle of Higher Education	Nov 2012
Article	"Employment Solutions: Can a Town’s Good Deeds Lower Unemployment?"	Christian Science Monitor	Jun 2012
Article	"Meet Your Neighbors, if Only Online,"	New York Times	May 2012
Podcast	"Robert Sampson on the Neighborhood Effect"	The Society Pages	Apr 2012
Podcast	Milt Rosenberg's "Extension 720", WGN, Chicago (April 2012).	WGN Chicago	Apr 2012
Article	"Chicago as Urban Microcosm"	Harvard Gazette	Feb 2012
Article	"The Persistence of Place"	Harvard Magazine	Feb 2012
Video	“NORC 70th Anniversary Celebration Keynote Address"	University of Chicago	Apr 2011

COVID-19

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	‘We don't just live in our neighborhoods': How neighborhood inequality might have been linked to your risk of getting COVID	Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ashley Luthern	Feb 2022
Article	COVID-19 Targets Communities of Color	Harvard Gazette	Apr 2020
Article	Why African-Americans may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19	Science News	Apr 2020

Immigration and Crime

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	Donald Trump: Wrong on Immigration and Crime.	Chicago Magazine	Jul 2015
Article	Trump and the Myth of Immigrant Crime	Chicago Tribune	Jul 2015
Article	America’s Leading Immigrant Cities	Atlantic CityLab	2015
Article	"Does Crime Drop When Immigrants Move In?"	NPR All Things Considered	Mar 2013
Article	"Don't Shut the Golden Door: The Beneficial Impact of Immigration."	New York Times	Jun 2012
Article	"Arrival of the Fittest: Canada’s Crime Rate is Dropping as Immigration Increases. Is There a Connection?"	The Walrus	Jun 2011
Article	"Do Immigrants Make Us Safer?"	New York Times Magazine	Dec 2006
Article	"Good Waves."	Boston Glove	Jan 2006
Article	"Open Doors Don't Invite Criminals."	New York Times	Mar 2006
Article	“Immigrant Effects: Latinos Nix Violence."	Havard Magazine	Sep 2006
Podcast	"Do Illegal Immigrants Burden the Justice System?"	NPR Morning Edition	Apr 2006
Article	Mais Immigrantes, Menos Crimes	Época Magazine, Brazil, Solange Azevedo	May 2007

“Broken Windows” and Disorder

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	Private Conflict, Not Broken Windows	Atlantic CityLab, by Richard Florida	2015
Podcast	"A Brief History of Disorder and Getting to Grips with Disorder." Interview Discussion with Richard Sennett	British Journal of Sociology podcast	2009
Podcast	"Urban Crime and Disorder."	BBC’s Thinking Allowed	Oct 2008
Article	The Cracks in 'Broken Windows'	Boston Globe	Feb 2006
Article	A Crack in the Broken-Windows Theory.	Washington Post	Jan 2005
Podcast	Reconsidering the ‘Broken Windows’ Theory.	NPR Morning Edition	Mar 2005

Criminal Careers and Desistance

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	"Genetic Basis for Crime: A New Look."	New York Times	Jun 2011
Article	"Fight School Violence, Pinpoint Its Victims."	Time Magazine	Oct 2010
Article	"Crooks Take Early Retirement: Twigs Bent, Trees go Straight."	Harvard Magazine	Mar 2004

Gentrification

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	"The Criminalization of Gentrifying Neighborhoods."	The Atlantic, Abdallah Fayya	Dec 2017
Article	"A New View of Gentrification: Stark Findings in Google-enabled Study of Chicago Neighborhoods.”	Harvard Gazette	Aug 2014
Article	"Gentrification and the Persistence of Poor Minority Neighborhoods."	The Atlantic CITYLAB	Aug 2014
Podcast	Why aren’t Chicago Neighborhoods Gentrifying? WBEZ in Chicago examines gentrification in a 10-part series, There Goes the Neighborhood.	WBEZ Chicago	Dec 2014
Article	"In Chicago, Neighborhoods That Are More Black Don't Gentrify."	NPR, Code Switch.	Aug 2014
Article	"Is Your Neighborhood Gentrifying? Check Google Street View."	Wall Street Journal, Digits.	Aug 2014
Article	"Gentrification: white people following white people."	The Boston Globe	Aug 2014
Article	"Why and How Chicago Neighborhoods Gentrify--and When."	Chicago Magazine	Aug 2014
Article	“Google Street View shows that Gentrification in Chicago has Largely Bypassed Poor Minority Neighborhoods, Reinforcing Urban Inequality.”	The LSE American Politics and Policy Blog.	Jul 2014

Collective Efficacy, Social Capital, and Community Organizations

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Article	"Crime and Community." Q and A with Robert J. Sampson.	Boston Globe	Aug 2004
Podcast	"Collective Efficacy"	Thomson-Reuters Science Watch
Article	" Study Links Violence Rate to Cohesion in Community."	New York Times	Aug 1997
Article	Can Block Clubs Block Despair? Why do some poor communities fall apart while others cohere? Community organization can make a difference—up to a point.	American Prospect	May 2007
Article	"Bowling Alone?: Civil Society May Not be in Such Bad Shape."	Stanford Social Innovation Review	2006

Personal

Type	Name	Outlet	Date
Podcast	The Storied Career of a Social Structure and Life-Course Scholar with Robert Sampson	The Crime Academy, Reflection Series Podcast	Feb 2022
Video	Discussing the Stockholm Prize in Criminology	National Institute of Justice Conference	Nov 2012
Article	John Laub and Robert Sampson awarded Stockholm Prize in Criminology.	National Institute of Justice	2011