Rate My Professor Lacey Schaefer

Dr Lacey Schaefer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice within the Faculty of Arts, Education and Law at Griffith University, Australia, and a Research Fellow with the Griffith Criminology Institute. She earned her PhD in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati in 2013, Master of Science in Sociology from Mississippi State University, and Bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology. Her career includes prior roles as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security and lecturer positions leading to her current senior appointment.

Schaefer specializes in criminology, criminal justice, and corrections, with research interests encompassing community corrections, probation and parole practices, environmental criminology, crime prevention, desistance theories, procedural justice in supervision, and opportunity-reduction strategies. She developed the Environmental Corrections model, applying environmental criminology to offender supervision by restructuring routine activities to minimize crime opportunities while reducing individual propensity for offending. A pilot trial at a Queensland probation and parole office achieved a 28 percent reduction in reoffending rates compared to controls. This innovation has informed policy, including her consultancy for Queensland Corrective Services on training reforms for supervision officers. Her scholarship, with over 700 citations, demonstrates substantial impact.

Key publications include the book Environmental Corrections: A New Paradigm for Supervising Offenders in the Community (2015, with Francis T. Cullen and John E. Eck), Monitoring Offenders on Conditional Release (2014), and articles such as "Opportunity-Reduction Supervision Strategies With Domestic and Family Violence Probationers and Parolees" (Frontiers in Psychology, 2022, with Gemma C. Williams and Emily Moir), "Expanding desistance theories through the integration of life-course and behavioral economics principles" (Deviant Behavior, 2021, with G.C. Williams), "The impact of a collaboratively designed digital intervention on views of police legitimacy and reported young driver offending" (2024), and "Can family and friends improve probation and parole outcomes? A quantitative evaluation of Triple-S: Social Supports in Supervision" (2022). She has received the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Award for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and two Dean's Commendations for teaching excellence. Schaefer supervises PhD projects on prisoner re-entry and has spoken on problem-solving courts.