Raymond Paternoster, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. He received his B.A. in sociology at the University of Delaware where he was introduced to criminology by Frank Scarpitti and obtained his Ph.D. at Florida State University under the careful and dedicated tutelage of Gordon Waldo and Ted Chiricos. He is coauthor of The Death Penalty: America's Experience with Capital Punishment. In addition to his interest in statistics, he also pursues questions related to offender decision making and rational choice theory, desistance from crime, and capital punishment. With funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), he is currently working on research comparing the decision-making patterns and characteristics of a sample of serious adult offenders and a comparable group of community members.
