Mary Ellen Stitt is sociologist who studies the state's governance of mental illness and substance use. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy and a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY. 

She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and is a former ABF/NSF Doctoral Fellow in Law & Inequality and Fulbright Scholar. Her work has appeared in Social Forces, Social Problems, and Punishment & Society and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, P.E.O. International, the American Bar Foundation, the Rapoport Centennial Dissertation Fund, and the Harrington Graduate Fellows Program. 

Her current book project examines the operations and impacts of treatment-based alternatives to punishment, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, administrative and experimental-survey data, and archival research.

She can be contacted at mstitt@albany.edu.