Vera Institute of Justice

Jennifer was a research associate with the Center on Youth Justice. Her work at Vera focused primarily on detention and placement reform in New York City, including the management of a multi-agency juvenile justice research database. Jennifer has been involved in providing research support and technical assistance to the Department of Probation during the implementation of its new dispositional recommendation process and to the Administration for Children’s Services in the development of new placement classification tools that will be used to support the Close to Home Initiative.

In the past, Jennifer has worked on projects focusing on disproportionate minority contact, state-wide detention reform, and providing research support to the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office. Jennifer received her MA in criminal justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is currently completing her doctorate in criminal justice at Rutgers University. Her dissertation research focuses on the experience of juvenile incarceration and how it impacts the reentry and reintegration processes for young people in New York City. She has also taught classes in corrections, juvenile justice and delinquency, and criminology at Rutgers University.