Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice Ph.D. graduate, Justin Pickett, recently received the 2015 Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology. This prestigious award recognizes outstanding scholarly contributions to the discipline of criminology.

Pickett earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Florida State University before joining the faculty at the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice in fall 2012.

While pursing his doctoral degree in criminology, Pickett received the prestigious Joseph Harris Outstanding Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching. Pickett was also nominated as an outstanding teaching assistant during his tenure at Florida State University.

His broad research interests center on public opinion about criminal justice, including a particular focus on the development of strategies to improve the measurement and analysis of public attitudes.

Pickett also researches the roles of interracial contact, minority threat, and racial stereotypes as determinants of popular views about crime and justice issues. His past studies have explored the extent to which the association between black proximity and whites’ perceptions of victimization risk is contingent upon the latter’s endorsement of the stereotype of blacks as criminals. He has also participated in projects examining the effects of interracial contact on whites’ assessments of black criminality and on perceptions of victimization risk, and studied the relationships between ethnic threat and public support for judicial use of ethnicity in sentencing.

Pickett’s recent research projects include exploring the effectiveness of different techniques for increasing response rates and quality in criminal justice surveys and examining the ways in which context moderates the influence of racial beliefs on public support for juvenile treatment programs.