Shaun Gabbidon is distinguished professor of criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg.
MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — Shaun Gabbidon, distinguished professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, is among six Penn State faculty members to receive the 2024 Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement.
Established in 1980, the award recognizes scholarly or creative excellence represented by a single contribution or a series of contributions around a coherent theme. A committee of peers reviews nominations and selects candidates.
Gabbidon, internationally known for his research and publications in the specialty area of race and justice, earned the Faculty Scholar Medal for Social and Behavioral Sciences. This is the first time a professor from a Commonwealth Campus has been awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal.
Gabbidon has authored more than 100 scholarly publications, including 75 peer-reviewed articles and 13 books. His most recent books include the co-authored, “Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America,” that won the 2022 Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; “Criminological Perspectives on Race and Crime”; “W.E.B. Du Bois on Crime and Justice: Laying the Foundations of Sociological Criminology”; the co-authored, “A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime”; the co-authored texts “Race and Crime” and “Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Justice: An International Dilemma”; and the co-edited book, “Building a Black Criminology: Race, Theory, and Crime.”
His research interests include race and crime; public opinion on race, crime and justice; security administration; criminology; and criminal justice pedagogy.
He’s co-developer of the Theory of African American Offending (TAAO), which nominators said produced a paradigm shift in criminological theories that have been used to explain racial disparities. The field had for more than a century relied on general theories to describe all types of offending. However, Gabbidon’s research, detailed in the co-authored work “A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime,” considers historical factors of the African American experience in the United States. The work has been widely cited and has pushed scholars to further incorporate race-specific theories in criminology.
Nominators said Gabbidon continued to reshape research with his most recent work, “Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America,” which details racial profiling in retail settings. Gabbidon and a collaborator worked with a Fortune 500 company to analyze the policies and procedures for sales and loss prevention. In addition, they provided the company with a comprehensive analysis of shoplifting arrests in 42 of their stores and utilized an experimental audit study to chronicle the treatment of Black shoppers in retail stores in Manhattan. Nominators said it’s one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject.
Through books and research publications, Gabbidon continues to reshape how criminology and criminal justice are taught and researched by incorporating the contributions of Black scholars. Most notably, he co-authored the book “African American Criminological Thought,” which went back into the late 1800s and included voices of underrepresented scholars in the field.
In 2020, he was named one of the most influential criminologists of the last decade by Academic Influence. A 2023 update by Academic Influence found Gabbidon ranked in the top 25 most influential criminologists. He is one of fewer than 10 criminologists to be named fellows of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
The recipient of numerous awards, Gabbidon was most recently named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in recognition of his outstanding contributions to enhancing intellectual diversity in the field of criminology. He also was named a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2019. In addition, he received the 2015 Julius Debro Award for outstanding service, and the 2016 Outstanding Teaching Award, both from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on People of Color and Crime.
Gabbidon is a member of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He is also the founding editor of Race and Justice: An International Journal.
Along with his doctoral degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Gabbidon holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Baltimore, and a bachelor of science degree in government administration with a specialty in criminal justice from Christopher Newport University.
