Dr. Ted Lentz

Dr. Ted LentzMarquette University

Lalumiere Hall, 355

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of Americatheodore.lentz@marquette.edu

Assistant Professor

Social and Cultural Sciences

Ted Lentz (he/him) is a criminologist and data scientist whose research and teaching focus on advancing justice through applied quantitative methods. His work integrates statistics, spatial analysis, social network modeling, and computational techniques to investigate topics such as gun violence prevention, racial disparities in justice system outcomes, and access to treatment in correctional settings.

Ted brings expertise in program evaluation, big data, and policy-relevant analytics that inform justice initiatives. He leads interdisciplinary, community-engaged projects, including a data landscape analysis of Milwaukee’s criminal legal system. He has evaluated community-based gun violence prevention programs, such as Cure Violence St. Louis and Project Life, and has published in leading journals including Criminology & Public Policy and Justice Quarterly.

Ted teaches undergraduate courses in Criminology and Law Studies and graduate courses in Criminal Justice Data Analytics. His approach is grounded in social justice and public engagement, emphasizing experiential and team-based learning to help students connect their classroom studies to human experience and career readiness.

Education

2020 Ph.D., Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Missouri – St. Louis

2016 M.S., Criminal Justice, Texas State University

2014 B.A., Criminal Justice / Geography, University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh

Courses Taught

1001 Introduction to Criminology

6050 Advanced Quantitative Research Methods

6100 Advanced Social Statistics

Research Interests

Criminal Legal Systems

Gun Violence

Spatial Criminology

Quantitative Methods

Publications

Recent Reports

Lentz, T. (2025). Wisconsin prison treatment program enrollment, timing, and completion. Report commissioned by the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office.

Lentz, T., Sharif, S., & Woehrer, J. (2024). Milwaukee County Criminal Legal Landscape 1.0 Report. University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Report funded by Public Welfare Foundation.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Lentz, T., Vogel, M., Mathias, B., Early, A., Rey, K., Ibitayo, T., & Davis, M. H. (2024). Short-term evaluation of Cure Violence St. Louis: Challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned. Criminology & Public Policy, 23(4), 981–1017.

Kwon, K., Lentz, T., & Lease, M. (2024). Divergence of children’s friendships and intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation: Factoring in extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use. Emotion, 25(2), 443–456.

Hipple, N. K., Lentz, T., & Lewis, S. D. (2024). The influence of routine health care on reoffending in a sample of gun-involved youths. Journal of Community Health, 49, 277–285.

Hipple, N. K., & Lentz, T. (2023). Evaluation of a court-ordered violence prevention program for gun-involved youths. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 22(2), 108–124.

Vogel, M., Lentz, T., & Steenbeek, W. (2023). Contested neighborhood boundaries and intergroup and intragroup violence. Crime & Delinquency, 70(11), 2906-2931.

Lentz, T., Konkel, R. H., Gallagher, H., & Ratkowski, D. (2022). A multilevel examination of the association between COVID-19 restrictions and residence-to-crime distance. Crime Science, 11.

Huebner, B. M., Lentz, T., & Gibson, M. (2020). Systematic case review strategies: An application for jail population reduction. Justice Quarterly, 37(7), 1261–1276.

Huebner, B. M., Lentz, T., & Schafer, J. A. (2020). Heard shots—Call the police? An examination of citizen responses to gunfire. Justice Quarterly, 39(4), 673–696.

Hipple, N. K., Huebner, B. M., Lentz, T., McGarrell, E. F., & O’Brien, M. (2020). The case for studying criminal nonfatal shootings: Evidence from four Midwest cities. Justice Evaluation Journal, 3(1), 94–113.

Lauritsen, J., & Lentz, T. (2019). National and local trends in serious violence, firearm victimization, and homicide. Homicide Studies, 23(3), 243–261.

Lentz, T. (2018). Crime diversity: Reexamining crime richness across spatial scales. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 34(3), 312–335.