Joseph M. Bessette is Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor Emeritus of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught courses on American institutions, ethics, and criminal justice. Among numerous other works on government and criminal justice, he is coauthor (with Edward Feser) of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (Ignatius Press, 2017). He previously served in the Cook County (IL) State’s Attorney’s Office and was Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice.
