About

Emily Owens is a professor in the Criminology, Law and Society department at the University of California, Irvine's School of Social Ecology. Her research focuses on the economics of crime, policing, and the criminal justice system, with particular attention to issues such as police bias, criminal courts, recidivism, and public safety. Owens has contributed extensively to the understanding of how economic factors and policy interventions influence criminal behavior, law enforcement practices, and judicial outcomes. Her work often employs experimental and empirical methods to analyze topics including the effectiveness of policing strategies, the impact of economic development on crime, and the role of legal and institutional frameworks in shaping criminal justice processes. Owens has also been involved in national policy discussions and committee work related to policing practices, use of force, and public safety, contributing to reports published by the National Academies Press. Her scholarship is published in leading journals across economics, criminology, and public policy, reflecting a multidisciplinary approach to addressing complex social issues related to crime and justice.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Business
• Biology
• Law
• Ecology
• Microeconomics
• Demography
• Horticulture
• Art
• Geography
• Economics
• Forestry
• Gender studies
• Public economics
• Art history
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Replication Data for Costly Missed Connections: Visitation and Misconduct in California Prisons

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-03-18

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This provides data and replication code for "Costly Missed Connections: Visitation and Misconduct in California Prisons".

  PublisherDOI

• Multi-colored traps can enhance monitoring programs for native and non-native longhorn beetles in forest ecosystems

  Forest Ecology and Management · 2025-11-29

  articleOpen access

  Longhorn beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) are one of the most diverse families of beetles worldwide and they play critical roles in forest environments. Monitoring longhorn beetles is essential for both conservation and pest management, and baited traps are widely used for this purpose. Longhorn beetle species vary in their visual ecology and are attracted to different trap colors. A way to optimize trapping efficiency could be to combine multiple colors on a single trap, so to create a trap that captures multiple species at once. To test this approach, we carried out seven trapping experiments in Europe and North America, comparing the effectiveness of a multi-colored trap against single-colored black, red, white, and yellow traps at whole family, subfamily, and species level. At most sites, multi-colored traps captured significantly more species and individuals than black, red, and/or yellow traps. At the subfamily level, at most sites, multi-colored traps were equally or more effective than single-colored traps for Cerambycinae and Lamiinae. For Lepturinae, multi-colored traps were generally significantly more effective than black or red traps, but significantly less effective than white traps. Responses varied among species. Overall, our study suggests that the use of multi-colored traps can improve monitoring programs for longhorn beetles, supporting both faunistic surveys and early detection efforts targeting non-native species. • Different longhorn beetle species are attracted to different trap colors. • Combining multiple colors on the same trap can increase monitoring efficiency. • Multi-colored traps matched or outperformed single-colored traps in most cases. • Effectiveness of multi-colored traps varied across subfamily and species. • Multi-colored traps are a promising tool for monitoring longhorn beetles.

  PublisherDOI

• Strategic Cops and Robbers?

  Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics JITE · 2025-01-01

  articleSenior author

  We propose a new framework to investigate whether criminals exhibit strategic behavior in response to the criminal law and their enforcement. Unique data on commercial robberies in Milan allow us to examine the decisions robbers make regarding weapon choice, number of accomplices, and the type of business targeted. Our analysis explores the relationship between these decisions, the expected return from the robbery, and the probability of arrest, considering the constraints imposed by Italian law, which prescribes differential punishments based on certain criminal choices. We find some evidence that robbers act in accordance with expected utility maximization, particularly when operating in groups.

  PublisherDOI

• Prison connectivity and disease transmission to neighboring communities: The role of prison staff

  CrimRxiv · 2025-06-17

  preprintOpen access

  Using smartphone location data and a novel application of publicly available employment data, we map how California communities are connected to nearby prisons through the movement of prison staff, and we measure the role these connections play in spreading infectious diseases. Leveraging an exogenous prisoner transfer-induced COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin state prison in June 2020 as a quasi-experiment, we examine the unidirectional spread of the disease from the prison to surrounding communities. This outbreak was unique: its origin from outside Northern California was clearly documented and non-staff entry and exit was severely limited during this time. Our identification strategy compares zip codes connected and unconnected to the prison via staff movement. Compared to unconnected zip codes with similar pre-transfer COVID-19 rates and demographic characteristics (race/ethnicity, education, household income, age, and population), zip codes connected to San Quentin had 13% more new COVID-19 cases in July and 30% more in August. Our results suggest that a hypothetical novel infectious disease that emerged in California prisons could lead to almost 15,000 community infections within one month from staff movements alone. These findings identify the degree to which “closed institutions” are—even during lockdowns—epidemiologically porous, highlighting the need for public health interventions to reduce the unintended consequences of such connections on the spread of infectious disease.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prison connectivity and disease transmission to neighboring communities: The role of prison staff

  PNAS Nexus · 2025-06-01

  articleOpen access

  Using smartphone location data and a novel application of publicly available employment data, we map how California communities are connected to nearby prisons through the movement of prison staff, and we measure the role these connections play in spreading infectious diseases. Leveraging an exogenous prisoner transfer-induced COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin state prison in June 2020 as a quasiexperiment, we examine the unidirectional spread of the disease from the prison to surrounding communities. This outbreak was unique: its origin from outside Northern California was clearly documented and nonstaff entry and exit was severely limited during this time. Our identification strategy compares zip codes connected and unconnected to the prison via staff movement. Compared to unconnected zip codes with similar pretransfer COVID-19 rates and demographic characteristics (race/ethnicity, education, household income, age, and population), zip codes connected to San Quentin had 13% more new COVID-19 cases in July and 30% more in August. Our results suggest that a hypothetical novel infectious disease that emerged in California prisons could lead to almost 15,000 community infections within 1 month from staff movements alone. These findings identify the degree to which "closed institutions" are-even during lockdowns-epidemiologically porous, highlighting the need for public health interventions to reduce the unintended consequences of such connections on the spread of infectious disease.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Does black and blue matter? An experimental investigation of race, perceptions of police, and legal compliance

  Journal of Public Economics · 2025-08-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Using an online experiment, we examine the role of race in perceptions of policing and willingness to violate the law. Black and White subjects were asked to imagine themselves driving in a real (but unnamed) majority White or majority non-White US city in which the police department was either majority White or majority non-White. Subjects were incentivized to drive quickly but also warned that they might receive a ticket based on their speed, their personal characteristics, and the real-life ticketing practices in that city. Expectations about the likelihood of being ticketed for speeding were higher among Black subjects than among White subjects. Black subjects also showed a higher willingness to pay for information on the racial makeup of the police department. However, Black subjects drove at similar speeds under all conditions tested, regardless of the racial demographics of the city, the racial composition of the police department, or the disparity or congruence of the two. By contrast, White subjects drove faster when police departments were not racially representative. • Black drivers predicted a higher chance of receiving a speeding ticket. • Black drivers drover slower than White drivers in all contexts. • White drivers drove slower when in a city with a representative police force. • Black drivers’ speed did not depend on representativeness.

  PublisherDOI

• Electronic Surveillance in Immigration Court: Evidence from the CalGang Database

  Critical Criminology · 2024-06-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Through a mixed-methods approach that draws on over 4000 pages of organizational documents and two quantitative data sets from federal and state entities, the authors ask, has the growth of electronic surveillance by local criminal justice agencies, with corresponding database interoperability and information sharing, changed how federal agencies—specifically immigration agencies—operate? We focus on the CalGang Database, California’s statewide gang intelligence database, to document how, since its inception in 1998, CalGang has grown both in the number of individuals under surveillance and the number of what we call adjacent users , which we define as people who can access CalGang data but were not initially intended as users and who, in pre-digital surveillance eras, would have a much more difficult time obtaining the information. In this paper we focus specifically on adjacent users in the immigration system who determine the detention and deportation of noncitizens by leveraging an information sharing agreement that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to Calgang between January 2006 and October 2016. Using a two-way “difference in differences” approach, we estimate the impact of CalGang interoperability on federal adjacent users by comparing outcomes across immigration cases that began before or after the data sharing agreement ended. Our qualitative and quantitative analyses both demonstrate that immigration adjudicators’ access to local electronic surveillance information is associated with an increase in the number of immigrants facing criminal immigration charges that do not necessarily require a formal criminal conviction in state court, and that deportation rates are higher when ICE has access to local electronic surveillance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Specialization in Criminal Courts

  The Journal of Human Resources · 2024-03-06 · 4 citations

  article

  <h3>Abstract</h3> We evaluate specialized domestic violence (DV) courts using administrative data on misdemeanor cases in Davidson County, TN between 2000-2006. We find that DV defendants arbitrarily assigned to specialized courts are more likely go to trial, and less likely to be convicted, than those in traditional court. DV victims in cases assigned to specialized courts are less likely to be involved in future DV incidents, but more likely to cooperate with police than those assigned to traditional courts. Defendants assigned to DV vs. traditional courts are no more or less likely to be charged with a future crime.

  PublisherDOI

• Does Black and Blue Matter? An Experimental Investigation of Race, Perceptions of Police, and Legal Compliance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Electronic Surveillance in Immigration Court: Evidence from the CalGang Database

  CrimRxiv · 2024-09-16

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Through a mixed-methods approach that draws on over 4000 pages of organizational documents and two quantitative data sets from federal and state entities, the authors ask, has the growth of electronic surveillance by local criminal justice agencies, with corresponding database interoperability and information sharing, changed how federal agencies—specifically immigration agencies—operate? We focus on the CalGang Database, California’s statewide gang intelligence database, to document how, since its inception in 1998, CalGang has grown both in the number of individuals under surveillance and the number of what we call adjacent users, which we define as people who can access CalGang data but were not initially intended as users and who, in pre-digital surveillance eras, would have a much more difficult time obtaining the information. In this paper we focus specifically on adjacent users in the immigration system who determine the detention and deportation of noncitizens by leveraging an information sharing agreement that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to Calgang between January 2006 and October 2016. Using a two-way “difference in differences” approach, we estimate the impact of CalGang interoperability on federal adjacent users by comparing outcomes across immigration cases that began before or after the data sharing agreement ended. Our qualitative and quantitative analyses both demonstrate that immigration adjudicators’ access to local electronic surveillance information is associated with an increase in the number of immigrants facing criminal immigration charges that do not necessarily require a formal criminal conviction in state court, and that deportation rates are higher when ICE has access to local electronic surveillance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rob C. Johns

  Canadian Forest Service

  40 shared

• Francesco Fasani

  28 shared

• Matthew Freedman

  20 shared

• Sara Edwards

  Canadian Forest Service

  19 shared

• Yowell Webber

  Maison des Sciences de l'Homme

  16 shared

• Couveinhes Matsumoto

  Wallonie-Bruxelles International

  16 shared

• Mastrobuoni Giovanni

  Wallonie-Bruxelles International

  16 shared

• Magali Bouteille-Brigant

  Le Mans Université

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of Maryland-College Park