He received his Ph.D. in Crime, Law & Justice in 2003 from the Pennsylvania State University. His dissertation was supported by the Forrest Crawford Fellowship for Ethical Inquiry and received the Penn State Alumni Association Dissertation Award. In 2008 Dr. Johnson received the American Society of Criminology Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award. His current research interests include contextual variations in sentencing, racial and ethnic relations in society, and the use of advanced statistical modeling techniques to study criminal processes.