Joan Fish McCord (August 4, 1930 – 2004) was an American professor of Criminology at Temple University.

Through her experimental studies of delinquency, including the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, and her philosophical perspective, she made important contributions to the understanding of developmental criminology, the differing roles of mothers, fathers, and neighborhoods, and the importance of differentiating between discipline and punishment.

She is said to have made unique contributions by merging philosophical thinking with empirical social sciences.

[1] Aside from being a criminologist Joan McCord was known for her editorial work, particularly chapter four of the Cures That Harm which came out in The New York Times in 2002.

[7] A volume of her essays on criminology, edited by her son Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, were published postmortem by Temple University Press in 2007.