Law and Order
Don't have an account?
Register
Advertisement
Register
Law and Order
Law and Order
12,980
pages
in: Characters, Homicide Department, L&O Characters,
and 24 more

Donald Cragen

Sign in to edit

Donald "Don" Cragen is a retired captain in the NYPD who, over the span of 25 years, served as commanding officer of the 27th Precinct and the Manhattan Special Victims Unit.

History[]

Cragen served as a Green Beret during the Vietnam War. After the war, he became a police officer. In the 1970s, as a patrolman, he once arrested master thief Frank Hagar.

Cragen was a recovering alcoholic. He quit drinking in the early 1980s after pulling a gun on a cab driver in a drunken rage, and has been sober ever since. (L&O: "Prescription for Death") Though he remains sober, he does keep alcohol in his office and is seen offering it to Detective Olivia Benson (SVU: "A Single Life"), and serving it to Detective Brian Cassidy (SVU: "Disrobed") and Assistant district attorney Alexandra Cabot. (SVU: "Closure (Part II)") He once admitted to a department psychiatrist that he was tempted daily to drink to escape the horrors he witnessed in his job. (SVU: "Slaves")

Cragen eventually was promoted to homicide detective and partnered with Max Greevey, and made the captain of the 27th precinct in 1989. There, he worked with Greevey, Mike Logan, Phil Cerreta, and Lennie Briscoe. He was investigated for being part of money laundering scheme within the department, but was exonerated after he exposed his mentor Peter O'Farrell as the real culprit. (L&O: "The Blue Wall") This incident made him many enemies within the NYPD's bureaucracy, who prevented him from being promoted above the rank of Captain.

He transferred to the Anti-Corruption Task Force in 1993. (L&O: "Bad Faith")

His wife Marge was a flight attendant. In 1999, she was killed in a plane crash. (SVU: "A Single Life") Shortly afterward, Cragen became the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit. Over the next 15 years, he worked with Benson (to whom he had become a major mentor to), Detectives Elliot Stabler, John Munch, Odafin Tutuola, Brian Cassidy, Monique Jeffries, Dani Beck, Chester Lake, Amanda Rollins, and Nick Amaro.

His experiences with addiction led him to have a more understanding attitude when his subordinates made mistakes; when Rollins' gambling addiction began interfering with her work, for example, he got her into a rehab program rather than firing her. (SVU: "Home Invasions")

In 2012, he was falsely accused of murdering a prostitute named Carissa Gibson; he was being set up by Delia Wilson, a sex trafficker whom SVU had been investigating. (SVU: "Rhodium Nights") He was eventually exonerated, however, and once again took command of SVU. (SVU: "Above Suspicion")

Cragen officially retired from the Special Victims Unit in 2014, leaving Benson in charge. (SVU: "Amaro's One-Eighty") Shortly before retiring, he began dating a woman named Eileen Switzer. The two of them took a trip around the world together.

Cragen later helped Benson and Rollins' reinvestigation into a rape that occurred around the time he ran the 27th Precinct. (SVU: "Perverted Justice")

When true crime podcaster Burton Lowe tried to exonerate the incarcerated Ian Ridley from the murder of his high school girlfriend, Benson, Rollins, and Amaro called him via videoconference to ask about what he remembered about the case. He also mentioned how proud he was that Benson was now a captain. (SVU: "The Five Hundredth Episode")

Stabler reunited with Cragen at his residence while looking for answers about his father's legacy. Cragen told Stabler that most police officers were corrupt back in the day, but his father was a good cop. (OC: "Can't Knock The Hustle") When Elliot was awarded the NYPD's Combat Cross, an award his father had been given as well decades before, Cragen attended the ceremony along with the Stabler family. (OC: "Friend Or Foe")

Officer-involved shootings[]

  • Bulgarian mobster (SVU: "Ace")

Appearances[]

Trivia[]

  • At the time of his retirement, Cragen was the longest-running character in the Law & Order franchise in terms of appearances, appearing in the first 3 seasons of Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's run until the middle of its 15th season. With his later guest appearances on Law & Order: Organized Crime, he once again became the longest-running character of the franchise chronologically as he appeared on the very first episode of Law & Order all the way to franchise episodes in 2024.
  • The Law & Order universe is inconsistent on the issue of whether Cragen had any children. He made references to having a son in Law & Order, but in Special Victims Unit he stated that he had no children.
  • Cragen was suspended three times from SVU. The first was in Season 9's premiere, after the events of the Season 8 finale "Screwed", where it was revealed the many illegal actions of his detectives. The second time was in Season 11, during the Nikki Sherman investigation, as a result of Stabler's actions. The third time was in Season 14, when he was being tried for the death of a prostitute, when it was revealed that he was framed, he was temporarily placed until he returned several episodes later.
  • Cragen is the first of seven characters from the Law & Order franchise and the first of five from the original Law & Order to be moved from the show to another spinoff. The others are Lennie Briscoe, Mike Logan, Connie Rubirosa (all of whom moved from the original Law & Order to other shows), Arthur Branch (who actually appeared on Law & Order and Law & Order: Trial by Jury simultaneously), Alexandra Cabot (who moved from SVU to Conviction), and Elliot Stabler (who moved from SVU to Law & Order: Organized Crime). Cragen was moved from Law & Order to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
  • Upon being cast in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Dann Florek and the show's producers created a backstory for Cragen in which he began drinking again and frequenting prostitutes to numb the pain of Marge's death, and decided to join the Special Victims Unit as a way to escape that downward spiral. This backstory is never explicitly stated in SVU, but Florek used it as subtext for his portrayal of the character.
  • Cragen is the only former main character from the first twelve seasons of SVU to appear on Law & Order: Organized Crime (from the time when Elliot Stabler was a main character on SVU) as well as one of two former main characters to appear on OC, the other character being Rafael Barba. This excludes Christian Garland, who was a main character at the time of his appearance; and Elliot Stabler, who moved to OC as a main character.
  • Cragen is also the only former Law & Order main character to appear on OC (The other characters from Law & Order who have made an appearance on OC were the then main characters Frank Cosgrove, Jalen Shaw, and Kate Dixon).



Icon L&O Law & Order - Main Characters
Law

Senior Detectives: Max Greevey • Phil Cerreta • Lennie Briscoe • Joe Fontana • Ed Green • Cyrus Lupo • Kevin Bernard • Frank Cosgrove • Jalen Shaw

Junior Detectives: Mike Logan • Rey Curtis • Ed Green • Nick Falco • Nina Cassady • Cyrus Lupo • Kevin Bernard • Frank Cosgrove • Jalen Shaw • Vincent Riley

Commanding Officers: Donald Cragen • Anita Van Buren • Kate Dixon • Jessica Brady

Order

Executive Assistant District Attorneys: Benjamin Stone • Jack McCoy • Michael Cutter • Nolan Price

Assistant District Attorneys: Paul Robinette • Claire Kincaid • Jamie Ross • Abbie Carmichael • Serena Southerlyn • Alexandra Borgia • Connie Rubirosa • Samantha Maroun

District Attorneys: Adam Schiff • Nora Lewin • Arthur Branch • Jack McCoy • Nicholas Baxter

Others

Elizabeth Olivet • Alfred Wentworth

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
Advertisement

Fan Feed

More Law and Order