Ruth Peterson, professor emerita of Sociology and former Director of the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State, is a national authority on race, ethnicity, crime, and justice.
After taking charge of the Criminal Justice Research Center, she assembled a well-regarded group of scholars and researchers and transformed the center into a nationally-recognized research hub for the interdisciplinary study of crime and justice issues. Peterson also launched the Crime and Justice Summer Program, the first-of-its-kind nationwide summer workshop to support the advancement of minority scholars engaged in the academic study of race, crime and justice.
She co-authored the book Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide (Russell Sage Foundation 2010). She previously served as the president of the American Society of Criminology and was a recipient of its Sutherland Award in 2011.