Rate My Professor Christine Scott-Hayward

Christine Scott-Hayward is Professor in the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management at California State University, Long Beach, a position she has held since August 2023, following promotions from Associate Professor (2019-2023) and Assistant Professor (2013-2019). She served as Director of the School from August 2022 to July 2025. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Law and Society from New York University (2011), with a dissertation on parole, desistance, and rehabilitation; an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago (2000), with a thesis on the origins of anti-death penalty discourse; and a B.C.L. (International) with First Class Honors from University College Dublin School of Law (1999). Prior roles encompass Supreme Court Fellow in the Office of the General Counsel at the United States Sentencing Commission (2016-2017), Associate-in-Law and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Columbia Law School (2011-2013), Law Clerk to the Honorable James Orenstein at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (2010-2011), Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at City College of New York (2009-2010), and Research Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice's Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Prosecution & Racial Justice Project (2006-2009).

Scott-Hayward's research specializations include pretrial justice, bail and pretrial detention, inequalities in the criminal justice system, parole and reentry, supervised release, federal sentencing, privacy in the digital age, juvenile interrogations, correctional policy, and rehabilitation. Her major publications feature the book Punishing Poverty: How Bail and Pretrial Detention Fuel Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System (University of California Press, 2019, co-authored with Henry F. Fradella), named a “Best of 2019” by the Vera Institute of Justice; Handbook on Pretrial Justice (Routledge, 2021, edited with J.E. Copp and S. Demuth); “Bail and Pretrial Justice in the United States: A Field of Possibility” (Annual Review of Criminology, 2022, with J. Page); “Pretrial Detention and the Decision to Impose Bail in Southern California” (Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, 2018, with S. Ottone); and “Rethinking Federal Diversion: The Rise of Specialized Criminal Courts” (Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, 2017). She has earned multiple CSULB Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity (RSCA) Awards (2017-2022, 2025-2026), CSULB College of Health & Human Services Outstanding Faculty Recognition for Research Mentorship (2022-2023), CSULB Sabbatical Leave (Fall 2019), and CSULB Barnes Fellowship (2019), among other honors and grants. Scott-Hayward serves as Editor of the Criminal Law Bulletin and has contributed to various academic committees and public scholarship.