Donald Braman

Donald Braman is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and the Director of Science and Policy at the Justice Innovation Lab. He joined the GW Law faculty in 2006, following an Irving S. Ribicoff Fellowship at Yale Law School.

Professor Braman's scholarship and teaching focus on criminal justice reform, evidence-based policymaking, policing, criminal law, evidence, and the application of data science to legal issues.

Much of his research examines the profound impact of the criminal justice system on families and communities, particularly how mass incarceration can contribute to the very social challenges the system aims to address. He is the author of Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America (University of Michigan Press, 2004), a significant ethnographic study on this topic. Professor Braman also conducts research and writes on how human cognition influences law and policy.

Another significant strand of his recent research addresses corporate accountability, particularly concerning large-scale public harms such as those contributing to the climate crisis. He explores innovative legal mechanisms for holding corporations criminally responsible for such harms, including prosecuting fossil fuel companies for climate-related deaths and restructuring culpable corporations into public benefit entities to ensure future conduct aligns with the public interest.

In his role at the Justice Innovation Lab, Professor Braman works with jurisdictions to design and implement data-driven strategies aimed at reducing inequality within the criminal justice system. He was instrumental in establishing The Lab @ DC, where he served as a Senior Social Scientist from 2016 to 2020, assisting D.C. agencies in leveraging data and research to enhance equitable outcomes, especially in public safety and reentry.

Professor Braman has a long history of service to the District of Columbia, including appointments to the DC Sentencing and Criminal Code Reform Commission, the DC Criminal Code Reform Commission (Advisory Member), and the Research Subcommittee for the DC Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Task Force. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School in 2009.
 

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