Kimberly Kempf-Leonard (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Criminology, Sociology, and Political Economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her interests involve conceptualization and measurement, reducing inequality and improving effectiveness within systems of justice. She teaches courses on research design, social control, delinquency, criminal justice policy, and the correlates of crime and justice. Her work has brought innovation to measurement of diverse topics, including criminal career patterns, gender bias, racial disparity, insider trading, judicial decision-making, and theories of crime and justice. She is probably best known for her research aimed at understanding and improving juvenile justice system policies and procedures. Much of her applied research to assist state and local criminal justice agencies with policy evaluation and reform has been supported by state and federal funding. Her work has appeared in leading criminology journals and several edited books. Minorities in Juvenile Justice, a co-edited volume, won the 1997 Gustavus Myers Award for Human Rights in North America. She has presented her work annually at the American Society of Criminology Meetings, and as invited speaker to the National Conference of Governors, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the National Coalition of Juvenile Justice, the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Children and Crime, the British Home Office, and the American Bar Association. With co-author P. Tracy, she is preparing a follow-up volume to Continuity & Discontinuity in Criminal Careers (1997, Plenum) about life course patterns of the 14,000 females in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study, including details about self-reported victimization, offending, and other personal experiences obtained from a survey administered to a sample of the cohort in their early 20s. She also is working with the Dallas County Juvenile Department to improve the quality and
