Megan Stevenson

I wonder how many law professors wrote two versions of an article about tariffs and have just decided which one to post.

On a historical level, the whole "we shun you for being friendly with the wrong sorts" is just the worst of humanity.

It's not that I feel bad for the people. It's that I find the whole charade of pointed fingers and performative, groveling apologies a bit repugnant.

I guess, but I'd rather hang the rich for the crimes they've committed rather than for hanging out with the wrong person. It just gives me the ick.

Can you say a little more what you mean? Do you think that society has a greater obligation to ostracize powerful people who have done bad things?

So yeah, it makes me feel a little weird that there seems to be near universal agreement that having had a warm relationship with Epstein is something to be ashamed of. 4/

I don't think people that have committed even pretty terrible crimes should be ostracized from society for the rest of their lives. 3/

I feel incredibly strongly that people are neither good nor bad. Everyone is more than the worst thing they've done. 2/

I used to tutor in juvenile jails and found myself really liking and connecting with kids who had committed murder. 1/

I don't think it's wrong to have a warm relationship with somebody who‘s done some really shitty things in their life. Which means I don't get canceling most of the people in the Epstein files. I think I might be the only one here.

Are you by any chance able to pass on Ben Wiggins' email address? I looked for it online, but don't see it anywhere. I wanted to thank him for his research and pass on my paper.

It's not that we never collectively learned anything new; it's just that there's a lot of trodding old ground, that's part of the process.

Anyway, hope that's helpful/responsive to what you were thinking about. 4/4

A similar thing happens across disciplines. Research moves in cycles. One field experiencing something as new that another field has been thinking about for a while, then on to the next thing. 3/

There is not necessarily a problem with that. Many issues are perennial, but we need to learn them for ourselves to really understand them. 2/

The more I read history, the more I realize how much of academic research is rediscovering things others were thinking about 50 or 100 years ago. So I would say, "reinventing the wheel" is a pretty central part of the academic process. 1/

I read Ben Wiggins' dissertation (later, his book) when researching my paper and cite some of his stuff in there. I'm not totally sure I'm following your question, though. Can you say it again?

This is a good paper. There's a sort of parallel literature in psychiatry developing (though a bit later) around length of stay in mental hospitals, and suicide risk. Unemployment insurance and other social programs develop similar questions. Any recommendations for histories that connect this?

Just built a skill in Cursor that automatically extracts every figure, table, and equation in a paper and puts them in sequential order in a PowerPoint presentation with the paper title on the first slide. So useful for teaching a paper! And so satisfying to have built this. :)

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

Robynn Cox and I have a new paper! It's about the history of predictive algorithms in criminal justice, back in the 1920s-1950s. This paper is the result of five years of research and we're so happy to see it out. 🧵 1/

I've been using Cursor but am just trying Claude Co-Work (Windows). Compared to Cursor, Claude is just terrible. Is this others' experience as well? Everyone seems to be raving about Co-Work, so I'm wondering if there's something weird going on with security on my computer that is messing things up.

Stevenson and Cox on Eugenic Criminology and the Birth of Predictive Algorithms in Criminal Justice / @meganstevenson.bsky.social
lawlit.blogspot.com/2026/02/stev...

SSRN can be annoying. Here's another link!

illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-20...

If we saw “risk” as rooted in social/environmental conditions rather than the criminal tendencies of an individual, would we still support incarceration as the answer? /fin

#AcademicSky #HistSci #history #LawProf #HistTech #criminology #econsky #CriminalJusticeReform

When we decide to lock someone up to prevent them from committing crime in the future are we dressing up older ideas about degeneracy and defectiveness in the modern language of risk and dangerousness? 13/

But understanding history can sharpen how we think about risk assessment tools today. Risk assessments are currently being used to make incarceration decisions in more than a thousand counties. 12/

Risk assessment had pretty unsavory roots. This doesn't mean it should automatically be condemned—not everything with bad origins continues to be used in bad ways. Mathematical statistics also has eugenic roots, yet has since generated incredibly valuable knowledge.11/

Incarceration was an important tool in the eugenics toolkit, not just because incarcerated people could be sterilized but because gender segregation prevented procreation. Many considered it preferable to sterilization because it was less controversial. 10/

They believed they could build a society free of crime by segregating those deemed biologically inferior within isolated penal colonies. This included Black people, immigrants, homosexuals, people with disabilities—but also many poor native-born whites. 9/

His students and peers expanded on this work, pushing forth a variety of quasi-utopian visions with horrifically bigoted and illiberal roots. 8/

Burgess was a member of the American Eugenics Society and his tool invoked many ideas from eugenic criminology. It was adopted within a parole framework motivated by the idea that some are simply born criminal. 7/