Paul Kaplan

Paul Kaplan is a Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. He received his PhD in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine in 2007. His primary research areas are capital punishment and cultural criminology. His work has appeared in journals such as the Law & Society Review, Theoretical Criminology, Crime, Media, Culture, Race and Justice, and Law & Social Inquiry. His first book, "Murder Stories: Ideological Narratives in Capital Punishment" was published in 2012. His next book, with Daniel LaChance, "Crimesploitation: Crime and Reality TV in an Age of Neoliberal Punitivism" was published in 2022 by Stanford University Press. He is the co-creator, with Brian Goeltzenleuchter, of the Art | Crime Archive: www.artcrimearchive.net.

Dr. Kaplan is the former President of the Western Society of Criminology (2013-2014). Prior to entering academics, he worked as a mitigation investigator on capital cases.