Alfred Blumstein, Who Transformed the Study of Crime, Dies at 95

Alfred Blumstein, an engineer who applied mathematical models and systems theory to the study of criminal behavior, died on Jan. 13 at his home in Canton, Mass. He was 95. Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught and conducted research from 1969 to 2016, announced his death.

Trained in operations research, Professor Blumstein treated the criminal process like a system, mapping stages from arrest to prosecution and corrections and building computer simulations that traced downstream effects. That work produced two core insights: criminals tend to follow career cycles, and crime rates emerge from the interaction of street violence, courts and prisons.

He demonstrated, for example, how surges in arrests can create court backlogs, prompt more plea bargains and alter sentencing and prison populations, and he showed how incarcerating drug dealers in the 1980s often failed to shrink markets and contributed to a rise in youth gun violence.

United States, Canton, Massachusetts

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