Senior Vice President and Director,
Substance Abuse, Mental Health and Criminal Justice Systems Department
(301) 634-9330
brownstein-henry@norc.org
Expertise
Violence and violent crime
Drugs and crime and illicit drug markets
Crime statistics
Linking research and policy
Education
Ph.D., Sociology. Temple University
M.A., Sociology. Brooklyn College, City University of New York
B.A., Sociology. Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Background
Henry H. Brownstein is Senior Vice President and Director of Substance Abuse, Mental Health and Criminal Justice Studies at NORC at the University of Chicago.
Previous positions include: Director of the Center on Crime, Drugs and Justice at Abt Associates; Director of the Drugs and Crime Research Division at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore; and Chief of Statistical Services at the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). As Division Director at NIJ, Brownstein was responsible for setting the national agenda for research on drugs and crime and for the executive management of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. In his capacity as Chief of Statistical Services for DCJS Brownstein served as the Director of the NYS Statistical Analysis Center (SAC).
He was also a Principal Investigator for National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. (NDRI) in New York City, where for 15 years he conducted studies of the relationship between drugs and violence funded mostly by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
He has published dozens of articles and book chapters on topics including homicide, drug markets, drugs and violence, crime statistics, and the relationship between research and policy. He is co-editor of Violence: From Theory to Research (2004), and his books include The Problems of Living in Society (2003) and The Social Reality of Violence and Violent Crime (2000). He was recently elected Chair of the Section on Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco of the American Sociological Association (2009-10).