Mary Ellen Stitt is a 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 at the University at Albany, SUNY. Beginning in the fall of 2026, she will be an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University - New Brunswick.

Her book Trial by Treatment: Punishing Illness in an Age of Criminal Legal Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2025) draws on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, surveys, administrative data, and other sources to document the unexpected impacts of treatment-based alternatives to traditional criminal punishment. 

Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Punishment & Society, Social Forces, and Social Problems and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, P.E.O. International, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Racial Democracy Crime and Justice Network & Arnold Ventures, among others. It has received awards from the American Sociological Association's Sections on the Sociology of Law; Crime, Law, and Deviance; and the Sociology of Mental Health. 

She can be contacted at mstitt@albany.edu.