Wesley McCann is a research social scientist at RTI’s Corrections and Reentry Research Program. Dr. McCann joined RTI in 2022 after several years as a professor of criminology at George Mason University and The College of New Jersey.
Dr. McCann has provided policy guidance on counterterrorism and policing reform initiatives, consulted on how practitioners and researchers can improve existing extremism data collections efforts, and produced more than 30 publications that appeared in criminological, criminal justice, sociological, political violence, and international security journals as well as law reviews.
His expertise and research interests are extremist pathways, counterterrorism, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons use by non-state actors, immigration, criminal courts, and criminal law.
Dr. McCann is a researcher in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Evaluating Prevention Programming and Identifying Best Practices Undertaken by Allies Abroad project. He is also a site liaison for the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grantee Evaluation project funded by DHS. Lastly, Dr. McCann will serve as a researcher on a National Institute of Justice-funded project which examines far-right extremist pathways in the United States. On these projects, he will be working on designing and implementing surveys, conducting program evaluations, and assessing pathways into and out of extremist movements.
Dr. McCann’s notable publications include Outbreak: A comprehensive assessment of biological terrorism; CBRN terrorism interdictions (1990–2016) and areas for future inquiry; Islamic extremism and CBRN weapons; An analysis of hate crime victimization amongst immigrants. American Journal of Criminal Justice; Immigrants, crime, and the American dream: Testing a segmented assimilation theory of crime; Religious-inspired actors and CBRN weapons; and National security and policy in America: Immigrants, crime, and the securitization of the border.
