Sarah Lageson
Associate Professor of Criminology/Criminal Justice and Law
Education
University of Minnesota, MA 2012
University of Minnesota, PhD 2015
Rutgers Law School, JD 2023
Bio
Sarah Lageson, an expert on technology, surveillance and data privacy in the criminal legal system, joined the Northeastern University community on January 1, 2025, as associate professor of criminology/criminal justice and law with the School of Law and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice within the College of Social Sciences. She is an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation and previously held appointments at Rutgers University-Newark School of Criminal Justice as an associate professor and with Columbia University’s Department of Sociology and Universitat Pompeu Fabra School of Law in Barcelona as a visiting scholar.
Lageson’s empirical research has been published in peer reviewed journals, including Law & Society Review, Social Forces, Criminology and Law & Social Inquiry, and legal venues including Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and University of Illinois Law Review. Her book, Digital Punishment: Privacy, Stigma, and the Harms of Data-Driven Criminal Justice, was published by Oxford University Press and won awards from the American Society of Criminology, the Law & Society Association and the Privacy Law Scholars Conference. She holds a JD from Rutgers Law School, PhD and MA in sociology from the University of Minnesota and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Fields of Expertise
- Criminal Justice Policy and Practice
- Criminal Law
- Law and Technology
- Privacy and Data Protection
- Technology
Selected Works
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- Digital Punishment: Privacy, Stigma, and the Harms of Data-Driven Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Give Methods a Chance (W.W. Norton, 2019) (co-author).
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- “The Intersection of Cannabis Legalization, Criminal Record Relief, and Emerging Adulthood,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (2025) (co-author).
- “Chasing a Clean Slate: The Shifting Roles of Privacy and Technology in Criminal Record Expungement Law and Policy,” 38 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 1 (2024) (co-author).
- “Criminally Bad Data: Inaccurate Criminal Records, Data Brokers, and Algorithmic Injustice,” 5 University of Illinois Law Review 1771 (2023) (co-author).
- “The Stress of Injustice: Public Defenders and the Frontline of American Inequality,” Social Forces (2024) (co-author).
- “The Problem with Criminal Records: Discrepancies Between Official State Records and Private Sector Background Checks,” Criminology (2024) (co-author).
- “Surveillance Deputies: When Ordinary People Surveil for the State,” 57 (4) Law & Society Review 462 (2023) (co-author).
- “Access to Justice at The Intersection of Civil and Criminal Law,” Punishment & Society (2024).
- “Digital Criminal Record Stigma and Surveillance,” 5 Annual Review of Criminology 67 (2022).
Sarah Lageson
Associate Professor of Criminology/Criminal Justice and Law