Portrait image of Benjamin J. Mackey

Doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University


Benjamin J. Mackey is a Research Associate at the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University (Virginia, U.S.).  His research centers on community corrections in the U.S. and abroad, focusing on how state and non-state actors jointly construct and/or reform the corrections process.  In his scholarship, he draws upon implementation science frameworks to analyze and advance criminal legal reform efforts, as well as critical, postmodern, and sociolegal theories to understand the forms and distribution of social control in the community.  His ongoing dissertation work explores the role of multinational corporations in the implementation of electronic monitoring in Colombia and Chile.  With experience working in reentry, he is passionate about combining research with practice and has led trainings for community corrections personnel in the U.S. and internationally.

Benjamin is co-editor (with Ioan Durnescu, James M. Byrne, and Faye S. Taxman) of the Routledge Handbook on Global Community Corrections (2024), and his work has appeared in Punishment & Society, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Aggression and Violent Behavior, and the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.  He graduated from George Mason University with a B.S. and M.A. in Criminology, Law and Society in 2019 and 2021, respectively.