Jonathan R. Sorensen received his Ph.D. (1990) in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University. His areas of research include capital punishment and prison violence. Publications based on this body of work have been cited by Justice Breyer in Ring v. Arizona (2002) and Glossip v. Gross (2015). A coauthored article related to the conditions of confinement on death row garnered the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award (2019) for professional and scholarly excellence in the field of Psychology. He has served as an expert witness/consultant in over 100 death penalty cases concerning issues related to future dangerousness, proportionality, and racial disparity.
He teaches classes on capital punishment, corrections, and criminological theory. His current research continues to focus on issues related to the death penalty and institutional corrections.