Professor David Weisburd, the chair of the Police Foundation Research Advisory Committee, will be awarded the Israel Prize in Social work and Criminological research, the Israeli Education Ministry has announced. Weisburd is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law in Jerusalem.
The Israel Prize is largely regarded as the state’s highest honor. It is presented annually on Independence Day in a state ceremony in Jerusalem in the presence of the president, the prime minister, the Knesset speaker and the Supreme Court president.
The prize selection committee gave strong praise to Dr. Weisburd, who is also a Distinguished Professor at George Mason University and director for the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.
“Professor Weisburd is today one of the most prominent researchers in the field of criminology in the world and among the senior criminologists in Israel,” the prize committee wrote of their decision, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“In his groundbreaking research Prof. Weisburd examined the effect of focusing enforcement efforts in troubled spots and showed through extensive empirical studies that the focus of enforcement in one place does not necessarily lead to the migration of crime to another place, but rather greatly improves the fight against crime,” they wrote.
“These efforts helped streamline and improve the quality of life of public citizens. As such, his studies suggest numerous explanations for the formation of crime areas constituting a base for targeted intervention for preventing and dealing with crime,” the committee concluded.
Dr. Weisburd is one of the leading international researchers in crime and justice. He is author or editor of more than twenty books and more than 150 scientific articles that cover a wide range of criminal justice research topics, including crime at place, violent crime, white collar crime, policing, illicit markets, criminal justice statistics and social deviance.
He is the 2010 recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the 2011 recipient of the Klachky Prize for the Advancement of the Frontiers of Science. In 2014 he received the Jerry Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement in Experimental Criminology from the Division of Experimental Criminology (ASC), the Robert Boruch Award for distinctive contributions to research that influences public policy of the Campbell Collaboration, and the American Society of Criminology’s Sutherland Award.