James C. Oleson

James Oleson is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Auckland. After enlisting at 17 as a machinist’s mate in the US Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, he earned his BA in psychology and anthropology from St. Mary’s College of California, an MPhil and a fast-track PhD in criminology from the University of Cambridge, and a JD from Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley (where he served as the 2000-01 Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review).

Between 2001 and 2004, Oleson taught criminology and sociology at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. He was then selected as one of the four US Supreme Court Fellows for the 2004-05 year (and later selected as the Tom C. Clark Fellow). At the end of the fellowship year, he was appointed as Chief Counsel to the newly-formed Criminal Law Policy Staff for the United States Courts, working in the Office of Probation and Pretrial Services at the Administrative Office of the US Courts. He served in that capacity between 2005 and 2010.

In 2010, he moved to New Zealand, accepting a position at the University of Auckland. There, he has taught criminological theory, penology, psychological criminology, and contemporary criminology.

His first book - Criminal Genius: A Portrait of High-IQ Offenders - was published by the University of California Press in 2016.

In 2019, he co-edited (with Barbara Costello) Fifty Years of Causes of Delinquency: The Criminology of Travis Hirschi (Volume 25 in Routledge's Advances in Criminological Theory series).

Contesting Crime Science: Our Misplaced Faith in Crime Prevention Technology (2022) was co-authored with Ronald Kramer and published by the University of California Press.