Biography

Scott M. Mourtgos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina. His applied research focuses on policing and criminal justice policy. In particular, he is interested in public perceptions of police use-of-force, crime deterrence policies, police personnel issues, and the application of Bayesian statistics in criminal justice research. He has over twenty peer-reviewed publications on these and related topics, and his work has been published in the top general interest journals of both criminal justice and public administration, including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Public Administration Review. He is committed to the goal of integrating police practice and high-quality scientific evidence, an aim that is supported by his appointment as a 2020 NIJ LEADS Scholar. He also serves on the Research Advisory Board for the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), is an affiliate of the Police Staffing Observatory at Michigan State University, serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Criminal Justice and Police Practice & Research: An International Journal, and was inducted into the George Mason University Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame in 2024.

His public-facing communication has appeared in multiple written, radio, and podcast outlets. He is a past doctoral fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (2022), and an FBI National Academy graduate (Session 280), having served in various capacities in policing for two decades, including as a police executive.