Magnus Lofstrom is policy director of criminal justice and a senior fellow at PPIC, and a visiting professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Focusing on crime rates and recidivism, his recent work examines criminal justice reforms in California. His research also spans issues in immigration, education, and entrepreneurship. His research has been published in numerous academic books and journals, including Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Human Resources, Demography, Criminology & Public Policy, and Journal of Population Economics. He serves on the editorial board of Industrial Relations and was a member of then–California State Controller John Chiang’s Council of Economic Advisors. Prior to joining PPIC, he was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of California, Irvine. He received his PhD in economics from the University of California, San Diego.

Deepak Premkumar is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he specializes in the intersection of race, criminal justice, and health. Through the lens and tools of an economist, his recent work examines the broader effects of police use-of-force and social costs of policing. He aims to provide an empirical guide to understand the determinants of disparities in the legal and health systems, while investigating policies to alleviate them.  He has published a book chapter, co-written with Justin McCrary, in The Cambridge Handbook of Policing in the United States. His research has received support from Horowitz Foundation, and the Center for the Study of Law and Society, where he was a Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellow from 2018–2019. He received his PhD in agricultural and resource economics from University of California, Berkeley.

Thomas Sloan is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he focuses on criminal justice. Prior to PPIC, he conducted research on cannabis legalization and consumer finance. He holds a BS from Colorado State University, Pueblo, and an MPP from the University of Southern California.