Research Expertise and Interest

public policy, criminal legal system

Research Description

Felix Owusu is an assistant professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy. His area of study is in public policy with an economics track. He does research to understand inequality, race, and public policy with a focus on the criminal legal system. Trained as an economist, his work blends data science, field experiments, and quasi-experimental research designs to understand the application of law and bureaucratic processes in law enforcement agencies and their impacts across race and class.

He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University, where he completed his PhD in Public Policy. While earning his doctorate, he was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program, where he was the lead researcher in the report on “Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Criminal System” submitted to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He was also a Data Scientist in Washington, DC’s local government working with The Lab @ DC and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). In that role, he helped develop the process for releasing data on MPD’s police stops to the public and researched alternatives to law enforcement in promoting public safety.