JIRN Virtual Winter Meeting Bios 

Lindsay Bostwick, Ph.D.

Statistician
Reentry, Recidivism, and Special Projects Unit
Bureau of Justice Statistics 

Lindsay A. Bostwick, Ph.D., is a Statistician with the Reentry, Recidivism, and Special Projects Unit at the Bureau of Justice Statistics where she is a program manager for reentry and recidivism statistics. She has 20 years of experience working as a clinician and researcher in criminal and juvenile justice. She worked for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, the state SAC, designing and conducting over 30 research studies and assisting in the establishment of the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council. She also worked for the Justice Research and Statistics Association (now JIRN) and the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. Lindsay is a mathematical statistician with specializations in recidivism, sentencing, and corrections research. She has taught courses on research methods, statistics, juvenile justice, and community corrections as an adjunct instructor at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago. Lindsay received her B.A. in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati, an M.A. in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago, a graduate certificate in applied statistics from Penn State University, and her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Senator Jeff Brandes

Founder & President
Florida Policy Project

Senator Jeff Brandes is a highly respected and accomplished leader who served in the Florida Legislature from 2010 to 2022. He represented District 24, which covered the majority of Pinellas County, and was known for his innovative and independent policy-making. Throughout his tenure, he consistently advocated for solutions to address Florida’s most challenging issues.

He served as an Army officer in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. This experience gave him a unique perspective on leadership and public service. He has also advocated for prison reform and worked to increase public safety through improvements in the criminal justice system. The former Senator continues to be an expert leader in property insurance reform.

Since leaving office, he has founded the Florida Policy Project, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization that researches best practices and better outcomes in housing affordability, property insurance, criminal justice, and transportation. The Florida Policy Project is working to impact state policy-making on these pillars.

Caleb Coughtry-Carpenter

Research Analyst
Bureau of Justice Information and Analysis
Wisconsin Department of Justice 

Caleb Coughtry-Carpenter, Research Analyst, has a background in psychological science, with a research focus in attention bias and environmental psychology. In 2023, Caleb received his Master’s in Psychological Science from Northern Michigan University. He also has research experience in Orthopedic device trials at pre and post market approval. Caleb’s work with Wisconsin’s Department of Justice has focused primarily on the Justice Counts project, an initiative to standardize criminal justice data collection across several states for federal reporting. Caleb has presented at the 2024 SEARCH conference in Las Vegas as well as local conferences to present dashboards related to data ingestion errors into DOJ databases, and he continues to engage in various person matching projects at Wisconsin DOJ.

Keith Finlay, Ph.D.

Acting Chief, Business Development Staff, Economic Reimbursable Surveys Division
U.S. Census Bureau

Keith Finlay is the acting chief for business development in the Economic Reimbursable Surveys Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. Keith leads the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS) project at the Census Bureau. He also leads a team that is developing data infrastructure to support the enumeration of people living in prisons and detention facilities for the 2030 Census and other surveys. He also leads a team that is developing new data tools to use Census Bureau business and government statistical products. Keith received his undergraduate degree in economics from Reed College and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Irvine.

Colin P. Gruer, Ph.D.

Research Scientist 4
New York Division of Criminal Justice Services

Colin P. Gruner is a researcher at New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, where he has worked since 2015.  Prior to that he received his Ph.D. From the University at Albany, SUNY.

Stephen Haas, Ph.D.

Director, Research and Evaluation, Justice Research and Victim Services
ICF & Vice President, Justice Information Resource Network

Dr. Stephen M. Haas is Director of Research & Evaluation for the Justice, Preparedness, Workforce, and Community Development at ICF. He has more than 30 years of experience in project management, program implementation and evaluation, survey research, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis. He has served as principal investigator for multiple national and state level research mixed-methods research studies involving the collection and analysis of large-scale administrative records, general population, practitioner, grantee, and vulnerable population survey data, and focus group and interview responses. His peer‐reviewed works include studies published in journals such as Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, American Behavioral Scientist, Victims and Offenders, Justice Research and Policy, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, the International Journal of Instructional Media, Perspectives, and the American Correctional Association’s Corrections Compendium. He currently serves as project director and principal investigator for the State of Oregon’s Crime Victimization Survey (OCVS II), survey methodologist for the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Survey of Victim Service Providers (NSVSP) and recently completed a 5-year evaluation of DC’s Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants Show Up, Stand Out (SUSO) Truancy Reduction Program as the project director and principal investigator. He has a B.A. in psychology and political science from The Ohio State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati. 

Stephanie Kennedy, Ph.D.

Policy Director
Council on Criminal Justice 

Stephanie Kennedy has spent more than a decade conducting research to amplify well-being among justice-involved people and families, with particular attention to justice-involved women and mothers. Her scholarship focuses on enhancing community supports to reduce criminal behavior and victimization, implementing gender- and trauma-responsive interventions in prisons, and generating data-driven criminal justice system policy and practice reforms. Prior to joining CCJ, she was Director of Research Dissemination for an academic research institute focused on developing and testing well-being-based behavioral health interventions for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, correctional staff, law enforcement officers, and other criminal justice system stakeholders. Kennedy holds a Master of Social Work and a Ph.D. in Social Work Research, both from Florida State University.

Matthew Kijowski

Research Scientist
Office of Justice Research and Performance
NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services

Matthew Kijowski, Research Scientist at New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Matthew’s primary work focuses on NIBRS use and data quality in New York State.

Kimberly Martin, Ph.D.

Statistician
Law Enforcement Incident-Based Statistics Unit
Bureau of Justice Statistics

Michelle Masters, Ph.D.

Research Analyst
Crime Prevention & Justice Assistance Division
Hawaii Department of the Attorney General

Michelle Masters is a research analyst with the Hawaii Statistical Analysis Center and UCR program located in the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General.  She holds a B.A. in Psychology, an M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and a Ph.D. in International Psychology with a concentration in trauma studies.  Her recent SAC work includes reports on hate crimes, firearms, and grantee assessments.  Michelle also coordinates interagency research with recent topics including policy evaluation, community violence, parole/probation, and recidivism.

Melinda Mattingly, Ph.D.

Research Coordinator
Division of Data, Planning, and Improvement
Iowa Department of Management

Melinda Mattingly is the Research Coordinator for the Iowa Department of Management, Division of Data, Planning, and Improvement. Prior to her current position, she was a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University for more than 10 years. She earned her Ph.D. in 2012 from Saint Louis University in Social Psychology with a Statistics and Research Methodology minor.

Kelly Officer

Research Director
Oregon Criminal Justice Commission

Kelly Officer joined the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission in 2010 and has served as the Research Director since  2021. She has an MS in Statistics and extensive experience analyzing criminal justice data as well as evaluating program effectiveness and criminal justice performance measures. Mrs. Officer works on a wide variety of projects for the Oregon SAC, as she is the lead on fiscal analyses related to proposed legislation, conducts analyses on Oregon STOP Program data, and conducts analyses on all multi-agency projects where the SAC partners with other criminal justice system agencies within the state.

Robert Orth, PhD

Associate Professor of Sociology
Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP)

Dr. Robert Orth is an  at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and serves as a Research Specialist supporting the Pennsylvania Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) housed at the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). Dr. Orth has worked in and supported Pennsylvania’s justice system for over 10 years while being a frequent investigator and contributor to Pennsylvania’s federally-funded State Justice Statistics Program for Statistical Analysis Centers (SJS-SAC) research projects. Notable projects include examining the recidivism effects of diversion vs. incarceration among nonviolent, substance-dependent offenders; cataloging and synthesizing system-wide crime trends and analytical metrics over a 5-year duration; baselining the recidivism rates of county-supervised offenders; establishing and examining the rates of statewide firearm violence; analyzing weapon relinquishments in Protection From Abuse (PFA) order cases; and measuring the costs associated with non-fatal firearm injuries in Pennsylvania.

Mary Jane Parker

Research Analyst
Criminal Justice Coordinating Council

Mary Jane Parker is a research analyst for Georgia’s Statistical Analysis Center, where she previously served as a State Justice Statistics Fellow and intern. Mary Jane received a Bachelor of Science in Criminology from the University of West Georgia in 2017 and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice from Georgia State University in 2019. She is currently in Georgia State University’s Criminology PhD program.

Paul Perrone

Chief of Research and Statistics
Crime Prevention & Justice Assistance Division
Hawaii Department of the Attorney General

Paul Perrone has served as the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General’s Chief of Research and Statistics since 1996.  In addition to a range of other criminological duties, Mr. Perrone also serves as Hawaii’s SAC director and state UCR program manager. He holds a bachelor degree in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and a master degree in Sociology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Jessica Reichert

Senior Research Scientist
Research Manager, Center for Justice Research and Evaluation
Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority

Jessica Reichert is a highly accomplished and experienced researcher in criminology. With over two decades of experience, she had made significant contributions through her work at the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, where she serves as a Senior Research Scientist and Manager of the Center for Justice Research and Evaluation. Her research interests span a range of topics, including policing; deflection/diversion programs; behavioral and public health; probation and court services; corrections; and reentry. She have published extensively on those subjects, authoring well over 100 technical reports and peer-reviewed articles. Her work has garnered recognition, and she has been a 4-time recipient of the Justice Information Research Network’s National Research Publication Award. She taught crime analytics, research methods, and juvenile justice courses as an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago. She earned my master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and bachelor’s degree from Bradley University.

Kaitlyn Rines

Research Analyst
Ohio Statistical Analysis Center
Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services

Kaitlyn Rines is a research analyst with the Ohio Statistical Analysis Center located in the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services. She holds a B.A. and an M.S. in Criminal Justice. Currently, much of her work involves the analysis of statewide crime data to assist in the development of public policy and statewide grant programs. Kaitlyn has worked on projects identifying Ohio’s crime trends with the purpose of increasing accessibility to state crime data. She has developed reports on domestic violence, stalking, gun crime, and sexual assault as well as examined trends in state justice grant funding priorities and programming as part of a comprehensive strategic plan to inform data-driven funding decisions.

George Shaler

President
Justice Information Resource Network

George Shaler is the Senior Research Associate at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. He provides program evaluation and consultation services to state and local government agencies and community-based organizations. He offers technical assistance in evaluation capacity building (using a logic model approach) to many Maine non-profits. Mr. Shaler has extensive experience applying statistical methods and techniques and has been on the SAC staff since 2003. He has examined county jail trends, disproportionate minority contact, prison/jail health care issues, and juvenile and adult recidivism analysis and conducted a community policing program evaluation. Mr. Shaler has co-authored and/or edited numerous SAC reports, including the recent Disproportionate Contact: Youth of Color in Maine’s Juvenile Justice System, a winner of the 2015 Douglas Yearwood National Publication Award in the Statistical Analysis/Management category.

Christine Schulz

Research Analyst
Bureau of Justice Information and Analysis
Wisconsin Department of Justice

Christine Schulz is a Research Analyst at the Bureau of Justice, Information and Analysis (BJIA) within the Wisconsin Department of Justice. She has a broad background in history and political science, with specific training and expertise in statistics, statistical programming, and qualitative social science research methods. She developed statewide measures to assess the performance and outcomes of Wisconsin deflection and pre-arrest diversion programs and designed a robust data collection mechanism in REDCap to track participant-level data from both DPAD programs, as well as jail-based medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs. Currently, her includes multiple research and evaluation projects on DPAD and MAT programs, as well as testing the feasibility of linking data in the National Incident-Based Reporting (NIBRS) and the Wisconsin Centralized Criminal History Repository.

Philisa Weidlein-Crist

Director
Delaware Statistical Analysis Center

Philisa Weidlein-Crist has worked at the Delaware Statistical Analysis Center for 16 years. She worked 13 years as an analyst, moved to the Delaware Department of Correction for about 4 years as an analyst, and returned to the Delaware SAC three years ago as the Director. She has worked on projects involving Department of Correction populations, including the Delaware Annual Recidivism Study. Other work has involved arrest information, court data, and juvenile justice initiatives. Ms. Weidlein-Crist has also co-chaired several data committees for State reentry initiatives including the most recent initiative, the Delaware Correctional Reentry Commission.

Scott Wolfe, PhD

Program Director
Michigan Justice Statistics Center
School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University

Scott Wolfe is a Professor and Ph.D. Program Director in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He is also the Director of the Michigan Justice Statistics Center. Scott’s research focuses on topics such as police officer training evaluation, organizational justice, and police-community relations.

Jeffrey Zuback 
Director, Research, Analysis, and Evaluation
Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention Youth, and Victim Services

Jeffrey Zuback has been very active in the criminal justice data and research environment for over 15 years. He spent over 13 years at the Governor’s Office Crime Control and Prevention leading the data and research team and served a joint role as the Director of the Maryland Statistical Analysis Center where he was responsible for aligning the policy, statistical analysis and research resources with the Governor’s priorities. He also coordinated, conducted, and managed large scale data analysis projects to inform policymakers on various criminal justice data trends in the State of Maryland. Most recently, he oversaw the development of new data visualization tools, to include the use of Microsoft Power BI, to create innovative criminal justice data dashboards for internal and external customers. He also was hired as the first ever Public Safety Data Officer at the Greater Baltimore Committee where he conducted criminal justice research and data analysis to assist the business community with the development, implementation and measurement of effective public safety strategies for the Greater Baltimore region. He returned to the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy in June 2024 to lead the ever growing Research, Analysis, and Evaluation Team and the Maryland SAC.  He received his Masters of Science degree in Criminal Justice with a specialization in law enforcement from the University of Baltimore in December 2011.