Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Urban Planning and Public Policy
Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University
(949) 824-4927
gtita@uci.edu
2307 Social Ecology II
Department:
Criminology, Law and Society
Specializations:
criminology, community context of violence, urban youth gangs, homicide studies
George Tita is a Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California – Irvine. His education includes a BA from the University of Pittsburgh (1986), a Master’s of Science in Economic Development (1993) and Ph.D. (1999) from the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon. His interests include the study of inter-personal violence with a focus of homicide, urban street gangs, and the community context of crime. His methodological toolkit includes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, with a strong interest in mapping and spatial analysis. Dr. Tita is involved with an interdisciplinary group of scholars working to promote the use of spatial statistics and analysis throughout the social sciences.
Prior to joining UC-Irvine, Dr. Tita spent two years at the RAND Corporation as a Policy Analyst. There he directed an NIJ funded gun-violence reduction program in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles. The goal of this project is to work with all invested stakeholders to devise and test strategies for reducing gun violence. Partners in this effort include representatives from the criminal justice agencies (LAPD, City Attorney, District Attorney, U.S. Attorney and Los Angles County Probation Department) and well as the community at large (Homeboy Industries/Jobs For a Future, the local Catholic Dioceses, White Memorial Hospital, and the Association of Street Gang Workers.) This work continues at UCI.
Additionally, Dr. Tita is continuing his work on modeling the epidemics/spatial diffusion of violence over space and time and is examining the causal relationship between homicide and the economic decisions made by firms, such as firm births and deaths and employment decisions.
Professor Tita is the Director of the Livable Cities Lab
Web Links of Research Sites
- ESRI GIS Software Company
- InfoLink – Using Information Technology to Link Youth and Workforce Development, Private Enterprise, Community Revitalization, and Graduate University Outreach with 21st Century Opportunities
- The National Consortium on Violence Research
- Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science
- AI-GEOSTATS: The Central Server for GIS & Spatial Statistics on the Internet
- The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management
- The RAND Corporation
Web Links of Interest