October 06, 2008
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Joan Petersilia/Susan Turner, Co-Directors
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Joan Petersilia, Co-Director


Professor, Criminology, Law, & Society, School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine. Joan Petersilia is a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society in the School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining UCI, she was a RAND Corporate Fellow and Director of the Criminal Justice Program at RAND. She has directed major studies in policing, sentencing, career criminals, juvenile justice, corrections, and racial discrimination. Her expertise includes policy analysis, program evaluation, cost/benefit analysis, and statistical analyses. Dr. Petersilia's current work focuses on parole and prisoner reintegration. Since February 2004, she has served as Special Advisor for Research and Policy to California's Youth and Adult Correctional Agency (YACA). Dr. Petersilia is the Co-Director of the newly-established UCI Center for Evidence-Based Corrections. Dr. Petersilia has served as president of both the American Society of Criminology and of the Association of Criminal Justice Research in California. She is an elected fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and received its Vollmer Award for her overall contributions to crime and public policy.

Susan Turner, Co-Director


Susan Turner is a Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California's Irvine campus. She also serves as Co-Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections, and is a board member of the newly created California Rehabilitation Oversight Board (C-ROB). She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has lead a variety of research projects, including studies on racial disparity, field experiments of private sector alternatives for serious juvenile offenders, work release, day fines and a 14-site evaluation of intensive supervision probation. Dr. Turner's areas of expertise include the design and implementation of randomized field experiments and research collaborations with state and local justice agencies. Dr. Turner has conducted a number of evaluations of drug courts, including a nationwide implementation study. Her article, "A Decade of Drug Treatment Court Research" (2002) appeared in Substance Use and Misuse, summarizing over 10 years of drug court research conducted while she was at RAND Corporation. Dr. Turner is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the American Probation and Parole Association, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology.

Elizabeth Cauffman


Elizabeth Cauffman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Temple University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University. Dr. Cauffman is interested in applying research on normative and atypical development to issues with legal and social policy implications, and her current work examines adolescent development in the context of juvenile justice policy and practice. Specifically, her research involves identifying developmental trajectories of delinquency, developing diagnostics to improve the identification of treatment needs among youthful offenders, and exploring the legal implications of research on the development of mature judgment (which include such interrelated issues as competence, amenability, and accountability). Dr. Cauffman is a consultant for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency Mental Health Initiative and is a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. She is currently working with the California Youth Authority to address the mental health problems among juvenile offenders.

James Hess


Jim Hess is an analyst with the Center for Evidence Based Corrections. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Irvine School of Social Science in the Program in Social Networks. His dissertation focused on migration, economic development, and globalization, using ethnographic and survey field research in an Orange County immigrant community and across a year’s residence in the Marshall Islands. This project showed the linkage between the dynamics of migration systems and phases in the evolution of globalization, and argued that the sustainability of development projects is a function of regional political economy and international finance, as well as local ecology and institutions. He has also participated in research projects at the Division of Epidemiology, the Center for Public Health and Research, and the UCI Libraries, and has provided consulting on advanced statistical analysis for systematic qualitative data. At the CEBC he is currently focused on recidivism in the parolee population and predictors of the risk of recidivism, with a particular interest in family structures and cohesion, ethnicity, identity, and community/neighborhood effects.

John Hipp


John R. Hipp is an Assistant Professor in the department of Criminology, Law and Society, and the department of Sociology at the University of California Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research interests focus on how neighborhoods change over time, how that change both affects and is affected by neighborhood crime, and the role networks and institutions play in that change. Dr. Hipp approaches these questions using quantitative methods as well as social network analysis. His current work focuses on how neighborhoods affect parolees, both in shaping their access to the social services, as well as recidivism. Dr. Hipp is also studying the effect parolees have on the neighborhoods to which they return, and whether some neighborhoods are better able to reintegrate parolees. Dr. Hipp is a member of the American Society of Criminology.

Valerie Jenness

Valerie Jenness is a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Sociology, an Affiliate of the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at the University of California, Irvine, and the immediate Past President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. She has experience working with CDCR officials at every level, from administrators at Agency to wardens at prisons throughout the state to frontline officers working in the prisons and inmates residing in California prisons. She is currently working on a study of transgender inmates in California prisons, which involves interviewing hundreds of transgender inmates about their lives in prison and in the community. She recently completed a multi-year study funded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to determine the prevalence of sexual assault in California prisons as well as the characteristics of vulnerable victims and the context in which sexual assault in detention facilities occurs. The final report for this project, “Violence in California Correctional Facilities: An Empirical Examination of Sexual Assault,” was submitted to the CDCR in April 2007 and thereafter presented to numerous CDCR-related audiences and reported on widely by local and national press (see: http://ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/pdf/FINAL_PREA_REPORT.pdf). After completing this report, Professor Jenness served on the Governor’s Rehabilitation Strike Team to assist with the implementation of AB 900. Specifically, she Co-Chaired a Work Group on “Classification and Endorsement” with Joseph Lehman, former Secretary of Corrections in Washington State.

Professor Jenness authored four books and published articles in leading refereed journals in criminal justice, sociology, sociolegal studies, and criminology, including the American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Problems, Social Forces, Law & Society Review, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, and the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Her work has received awards from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Pacific Sociological Association, and the University of California; translated and reprinted in Japanese and German; presented at an array of professional conferences and universities in the U.S. and abroad (e.g., Germany, England, Hungary, France, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Australia, and Vienna) as well as to the U.S. Congress, the National Academy of Sciences, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; and funded by National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the California Policy Research Center, the California Department of Mental Health, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the University of California, and Washington State University.

Cheryl Maxson


Cheryl Maxson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California’s Irvine campus. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from USC. She is co-author of Street Gang Patterns and Policies (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Responding to Troubled Youth (Oxford University Press, 1997).and co-editor of The Eurogang Paradox: Gangs and Youth Groups in the U.S. and Europe (Kluwer/Plenum, 2001) and The Modern Gang Reader (Roxbury Publishing, 1st ed, 1995; 2nd ed., 2001; 3rd ed., 2005). Her articles, chapters, and policy reports concern street gangs, status offenders, youth violence, juvenile justice legislation, drug sales, community policing and community treatment of juvenile offenders. She has served as President of the Western Society of Criminology, where she is honored as a Fellow, and as Executive Counselor of the American Society of Criminology and associate editor of its journal, Criminology.

Amy Murphy

Amy Murphy, MPP, is the Research Specialist at the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining the Center, she worked in the consulting field in Washington, DC and with the Criminal Justice Research Division of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). While with SANDAG, Ms. Murphy worked on a number of research projects addressing topics in public health and criminal justice, including the Substance Abuse Monitoring project and an evaluation of the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act. Ms. Murphy received her master's degree in Public Policy from Duke University in 2003. Her primary interest is in applied research for policy application.

Jennifer Skeem


Jennifer Skeem is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. She completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in law and psychiatry research at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2001, after finishing doctoral training in clinical psychology and law at the University of Utah in 1999. Her research is designed to inform clinical and legal decision-making. Her current work focuses on understanding the construct of psychopathic personality disorder, assessing and managing violence risk, and identifying key influences on the outcomes of probationers who are required to accept psychiatric treatment. Dr. Skeem was named the 2003 winner of the Saleem Shah Award for Early Career Excellence in Psychology and Law by the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS, Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) and the American Academy of Forensic Psychology.
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