Mateus Rennó Santos, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, was selected to receive a Status of Latinos (SoL) Award. Santos is recognized for his contributions to the Latinx community, seen through his research and mentorship of multiple international scholars.
Originally from Brazil, Santos obtained a master's degree in sociology and worked as a researcher developing data on crime and justice. He says Brazil is a remarkably violent country, and most policies to address crime are not based on scientific evidence. With the goal of helping develop this evidence base, Santos moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in criminology from the University of Maryland – then the top ranked program in his field.
Santos is recognized at the awards ceremony.
Before attaining his PhD in 2019, he moved to Austria to work for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime developing a global database related to homicides. Using these data, Santos demonstrated that the great crime decline which happened in the United States in the 1990s actually also happened in most developed countries. He also showed that the decline was linked to the fact that the population in countries around the world are getting much older, and that older populations commit less crime. Conversely, criminal justice polices of individual countries, such as mass incarceration in the US, were not as impactful, despite their great cost.
As a faculty member in CBCS, Santos has mentored several students, most of whom are international scholars like him. His research demonstrates that part of the crime decline happening now across Latin America is due to population aging. At the same time, he uses quantitative methods to measure the true impact of policies which are used to address crime across countries around world. He has studies published in the best journals of criminology, and upcoming projects which aim to help reduce crime at a global scale.