The 2024 Stockholm Prize in Criminology was awarded to criminologist Gary LaFree of the University of Maryland and Tom Tyler of Yale University for their research on democratic legitimacy and procedural justice in policing democracies.: Stockholm University, where the prize is based, said it "recognizes outstanding achievements in criminological research or for the application of research results by practitioners for the reduction of crime and the advancement of human rights."
LaFree, author of Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime and The Decline of Social Institutions In America and founder of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), has made outstanding contributions to the criminology of legitimacy, especially at the macro-social level, and in the role of ideologies, the prize announcement said. Tyler author of Why People Obey the Law and (with Yuen Ho) Trust in the Law: Encouraging Cooperation with Police and the Courts, also has made outstanding contributions to the criminology of legitimacy, the prize sponsors said, especially at the micro-social level, with theories of procedural justice shown by independent field experiments to increase community trust in democratic policing by changing the ways in which police interact with citizens. The prize announcement said that, "In sharp departures from the more static traditional theories of why some people commit crime, both of the 2024 prize winners have offered far more dynamic perspectives."