Gary LaFree

Director
301-405-6600
infostart@start.umd.edu

Gary LaFree is Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, as well as professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He received his PhD in Sociology from Indiana University in 1979. Dr. LaFree served as President of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in 2005-6006 and has also served as the President of the ASC's Division on International Criminology (1991-1993), the Chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on Crime, Law and Deviance (1991-1993) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Justice Research Statistics Association (2000-2001; 1993-1994). While at the University of Maryland, Dr. LaFree was a founding member of the Democracy Collaborative and an invited member of the National Consortium of Violence Research. Before joining the faculty at UMD, Dr. LaFree served as Chair of the Sociology and Criminology Department at the University of New Mexico for six years. He served as the Director of the New Mexico Criminal Justice Statistics Analysis Center for thirteen years. Dr. LaFree received the G. Paul Sylvestre Award for outstanding achievements in advancing criminal justice statistics in 1994, and the Phillip Hoke Award for excellence in applied research in 1994 and 1998, from the Justice Research Statistics Association. Dr. LaFree helped found and later served as Director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico. Much of Dr. LaFree's current research is related to the development and analysis of the Global Terrorism Database, a major project being supported by START.

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