Joel M. Caplan
Director Ph.D. (2008) Univ. of Pennsylvania |
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jcaplan@rutgers.edu
Tel: 1 973.353.1304 Mobile: 1 347.625.7227 Fax: 1 973.353.5896 Twitter: @joelcaplan jcaplan.com |
Joel M. Caplan has a PhD in Social Welfare Policy from the University of Pennsylvania and a MA in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University. He is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice (SCJ), where he also serves as Director of the Masters Program. Dr. Caplan co-developed the spatial analysis technique known as Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM). RTM and the RTMDx software are now used by academic researchers and public safety practitioners in over 30 U.S. states and in dozens of countries worldwide. The White House, United Nations, National Academy of Sciences, World Bank, TED talks, and National Geographic Channel have featured Dr. Caplan’s research. Forbes ranked RTM among the ‘Top 5’ big-data analytic resources that can be used for ‘social good’.
Dr. Caplan has garnered an international reputation of prominence in the field of criminal justice. He has published two books with the University of California Press, authored over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, written more than 10 scholarly monographs or book chapters, delivered dozens of keynote addresses or invited presentations, chaired six doctoral dissertations, and serves on the editorial board of three refereed journals. He has raised millions of dollars in research funding. He is heavily engaged with the greater Newark Community, as well as other local governments and state agencies across the United States. In Newark he is co-director of the SCJ-Newark Anchor Initiative and faculty advisor to the Newark Public Safety Collaborative, which maximizes local resources, data and expertise to solve problems and improve public safety in the city in transparent, measurable and sustainable ways.
Dr. Caplan shows commitment to the diversity of people and perspectives, and realizes ways in which multiple points of view can add value to achieving shared goals. One theme in his work has been interdisciplinary collaboration, having partnered with psychologists, mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, anthropologists, epidemiologist, and neurosurgeons at Rutgers University and elsewhere to integrate interdisciplinary concepts, theories, methods and data to study pressing problems in need of innovative solutions. As a computational criminologist, and from his grounded perspective as former police officer, 911 dispatcher, and emergency medical technician, he takes the strengths of several disciplines and continues to build new methods and techniques for the analysis of crime and crime patterns.
Dr. Caplan has garnered an international reputation of prominence in the field of criminal justice. He has published two books with the University of California Press, authored over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, written more than 10 scholarly monographs or book chapters, delivered dozens of keynote addresses or invited presentations, chaired six doctoral dissertations, and serves on the editorial board of three refereed journals. He has raised millions of dollars in research funding. He is heavily engaged with the greater Newark Community, as well as other local governments and state agencies across the United States. In Newark he is co-director of the SCJ-Newark Anchor Initiative and faculty advisor to the Newark Public Safety Collaborative, which maximizes local resources, data and expertise to solve problems and improve public safety in the city in transparent, measurable and sustainable ways.
Dr. Caplan shows commitment to the diversity of people and perspectives, and realizes ways in which multiple points of view can add value to achieving shared goals. One theme in his work has been interdisciplinary collaboration, having partnered with psychologists, mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, anthropologists, epidemiologist, and neurosurgeons at Rutgers University and elsewhere to integrate interdisciplinary concepts, theories, methods and data to study pressing problems in need of innovative solutions. As a computational criminologist, and from his grounded perspective as former police officer, 911 dispatcher, and emergency medical technician, he takes the strengths of several disciplines and continues to build new methods and techniques for the analysis of crime and crime patterns.
Alejandro Gimenez-Santana
Deputy Director Ph.D. (2018) Rutgers University |
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Alejandro (Alex) Gimenez-Santana has a PhD in Global Affairs from Rutgers University. Before assuming the position of Project Manager, he interned at Washington's Fund For Peace as a Conflict Early Warning and Assessment analyst and then was the Training Coordinator for RCPS. In September 2012, he was awarded a 6-month internship at the United Nations working for the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University’s Division of Global Affairs with a focus on political economy, globalization studies, and global economic risk.
As Deputy Director, Alex administers research and development projects and ensures the smooth and effective functioning of training programs. This involves the planning and execution of regular scholarship or ad hoc research and training events. Other responsibilities include outreach and logistics, developing and maintaining education support materials, continually assessing the integrity of scholarly products and resources, and overseeing day-to-day operations of online webinars. Alex engages in scholarship and serves as an ambassador of the Rutgers Center on Public Security to the professional researcher and practitioner communities.
As Deputy Director, Alex administers research and development projects and ensures the smooth and effective functioning of training programs. This involves the planning and execution of regular scholarship or ad hoc research and training events. Other responsibilities include outreach and logistics, developing and maintaining education support materials, continually assessing the integrity of scholarly products and resources, and overseeing day-to-day operations of online webinars. Alex engages in scholarship and serves as an ambassador of the Rutgers Center on Public Security to the professional researcher and practitioner communities.
Eric L. Piza
Faculty Fellow Ph.D. (2012) Rutgers University |
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Dr. Eric L. Piza is an Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Department of Law and Police Science. He has over 10 years of Crime Analysis and program evaluation experience. Eric’s previous professional positions include GIS Specialist of the Newark, NJ Police Department, Research Director for Crime Analytics of the Rutgers Center on Public Security, and Research Faculty of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice. Dr. Piza is involved in a number of applied research projects focusing on spatial analysis of crime patterns, problem-oriented policing, crime control technology, and the integration of academic research and police practice. His recent research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Crime & Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, and Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
Senior Fellow
Norman Samuels | samuelsn@newark.rutgers.edu
Dr. Samuels is a University Professor and Provost Emeritus. His research interests are in the fields of terrorism and counter-terrorism, security and intelligence studies, and the intersection of international terrorism and crime. In particular, the interface among these topics and the American system of government.
Norman Samuels | samuelsn@newark.rutgers.edu
Dr. Samuels is a University Professor and Provost Emeritus. His research interests are in the fields of terrorism and counter-terrorism, security and intelligence studies, and the intersection of international terrorism and crime. In particular, the interface among these topics and the American system of government.
Research Associates
Marco Dugato | marco.dugato@unicatt.it
Senior Researcher at Transcrime since 2009 and Adjunct Professor of Methods and Techniques for Criminological Research at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy. From the a.y. 2010/11 to the a.y. 2012/13 he has been Adjunct Professor of Crime Statistics at the Faculty of Sociology of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. He holds a PhD in Criminology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and a MA in Sociology at the Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca. He is a founding partner and administrator of Crime&tech, a spin-off company of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore-Transcrime. His main research fields are spatial analysis of crime; predictive policing and risk assessment analysis; crime and criminal justice statistics; organized crime and illicit markets. He has coordinated several national and international research projects. His research has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals.
Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill | kbh@asu.edu
PhD (2020) City University of New York Graduate Center / John Jay College of Criminal Justice
JD (2011) Emory University School of Law
Kwan Blount-Hill is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and Assistant Director of its Center for Public Criminology. His research is focused on narrative and social identity within systems and processes of justice, including how marginalized communities and governments interact in the realm of public safety. Dr. Blount-Hill formerly served as a firefighter and police officer in South Carolina, a research manager at New York City's Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, and the first Director of Research and Data Analytics for the Brooklyn prosecutor's office, inter alia, and has been licensed to practice law in three states. His work has appeared in peer reviewed journals, such as Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Criminal Justice, Race and Justice, Public Administration Review, and Biological Conservation, and has been funded or awarded by several organizations including the American Sociological Association and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Jared R. Dmello | jared.dmello@tamiu.edu
Ph.D. (2019) University of Massachusetts Lowell
Jared Dmello is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department of Social Sciences at Texas A&M International University. His research interests focus on the intersection of security studies and criminal justice, with an emphasis on criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations. Dr. Dmello also has extensive experience as a program evaluator in both the academic and government sectors. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Terrorism & Political Violence, Victims & Offenders, Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice & Behavior, the International Journal of Cyber Criminology, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. He is the Principal Investigator on a grant funded by the National Institute of Justice using network science methods to investigate the longitudinal evolution of gang violence in the State of New Jersey.
Paul Boxer | pboxer@rutgers.edu
Ph.D. (2002) Bowling Green State University
Dr. Boxer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers-Newark, and Adjunct Research Scientist in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on the development of antisocial behavior, and the impact of exposure to violence and crime. Boxer has been PI or Co-PI on projects examining various aspects of violence and mental health funded by the US Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Centers for Disease Control. Boxer co-edited Treating the Juvenile Offender (2008, Guilford).
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot | begibbsv@ucalgary.ca
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. Her primary research interests are in the realms of crime, security and risk, with specific interests in how individual, organization and state orientations to related issues both diverge and converge. She authored Risk Balance and Security (2008; Sage) and Risk in Crime (2009; Rowman and Littlefield) with Les Kennedy.
Jason Matejkowski | jmate@ku.edu
Dr. Matejkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, School of Social Welfare. His research interests focus on mental health services for individuals with serious mental illnesses who are justice-involved and/or are homeless. Jason has researched housing services for individuals with long-term histories of chronic homelessness and mental illnesses, developed an online training for justice professionals to raise awareness of medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction and has examined the relationships among mental illness, criminal risk factors, and parole release decisions in the State of New Jersey. His recent research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Law and Human Behavior, Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, and Psychiatric Quarterly.
Grant Drawve | drawve@uark.edu
Ph.D. (2015) University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Dr. Grant Drawve is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining UA, Grant was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Rutgers-Newark with a dual appointment between the Department of Psychology and School of Criminal Justice. Grant has previously assisted on multiple Project Safe Neighborhood initiatives. Currently, Grant is on the Executive Committee for the National Dialogues on Behavioral Health; and he is involved in a number of projects including risk based policing, enhancing the prediction of crime analysis techniques, tailoring crime analysis approaches to public health outcomes, and understanding the role the environment plays in individual level outcomes. His scholarship appears in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Deviant Behavior, and Journal of Crime and Justice.
Simon Garnier | garnier@njit.edu
Ph.D. (2008) University of Toulouse
Simon Garnier is an Assistant Professor in the Federated Department of Biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). He obtained a PhD from the University of Toulouse (France) under the direction of Dr. Guy Theraulaz and performed his postdoctoral work with Professor Iain Couzin at Princeton University. Simon is now the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying Collective Behaviors and Swarm Intelligence in natural and artificial systems. The Swarm Lab started to operate in July 2012 and its research aims to reveal the detailed functioning of collective intelligence in systems as diverse as ant colonies, human crowds or robotic swarms. The Swarm Lab focuses in particular on the mechanisms of information transfer and integration in large groups that can lead to adaptive (or “intelligent”) collective responses to environmental challenges.
Marco Dugato | marco.dugato@unicatt.it
Senior Researcher at Transcrime since 2009 and Adjunct Professor of Methods and Techniques for Criminological Research at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy. From the a.y. 2010/11 to the a.y. 2012/13 he has been Adjunct Professor of Crime Statistics at the Faculty of Sociology of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. He holds a PhD in Criminology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and a MA in Sociology at the Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca. He is a founding partner and administrator of Crime&tech, a spin-off company of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore-Transcrime. His main research fields are spatial analysis of crime; predictive policing and risk assessment analysis; crime and criminal justice statistics; organized crime and illicit markets. He has coordinated several national and international research projects. His research has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals.
Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill | kbh@asu.edu
PhD (2020) City University of New York Graduate Center / John Jay College of Criminal Justice
JD (2011) Emory University School of Law
Kwan Blount-Hill is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and Assistant Director of its Center for Public Criminology. His research is focused on narrative and social identity within systems and processes of justice, including how marginalized communities and governments interact in the realm of public safety. Dr. Blount-Hill formerly served as a firefighter and police officer in South Carolina, a research manager at New York City's Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, and the first Director of Research and Data Analytics for the Brooklyn prosecutor's office, inter alia, and has been licensed to practice law in three states. His work has appeared in peer reviewed journals, such as Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Criminal Justice, Race and Justice, Public Administration Review, and Biological Conservation, and has been funded or awarded by several organizations including the American Sociological Association and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Jared R. Dmello | jared.dmello@tamiu.edu
Ph.D. (2019) University of Massachusetts Lowell
Jared Dmello is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department of Social Sciences at Texas A&M International University. His research interests focus on the intersection of security studies and criminal justice, with an emphasis on criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations. Dr. Dmello also has extensive experience as a program evaluator in both the academic and government sectors. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Terrorism & Political Violence, Victims & Offenders, Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice & Behavior, the International Journal of Cyber Criminology, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. He is the Principal Investigator on a grant funded by the National Institute of Justice using network science methods to investigate the longitudinal evolution of gang violence in the State of New Jersey.
Paul Boxer | pboxer@rutgers.edu
Ph.D. (2002) Bowling Green State University
Dr. Boxer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers-Newark, and Adjunct Research Scientist in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on the development of antisocial behavior, and the impact of exposure to violence and crime. Boxer has been PI or Co-PI on projects examining various aspects of violence and mental health funded by the US Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Centers for Disease Control. Boxer co-edited Treating the Juvenile Offender (2008, Guilford).
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot | begibbsv@ucalgary.ca
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. Her primary research interests are in the realms of crime, security and risk, with specific interests in how individual, organization and state orientations to related issues both diverge and converge. She authored Risk Balance and Security (2008; Sage) and Risk in Crime (2009; Rowman and Littlefield) with Les Kennedy.
Jason Matejkowski | jmate@ku.edu
Dr. Matejkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, School of Social Welfare. His research interests focus on mental health services for individuals with serious mental illnesses who are justice-involved and/or are homeless. Jason has researched housing services for individuals with long-term histories of chronic homelessness and mental illnesses, developed an online training for justice professionals to raise awareness of medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction and has examined the relationships among mental illness, criminal risk factors, and parole release decisions in the State of New Jersey. His recent research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Law and Human Behavior, Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, and Psychiatric Quarterly.
Grant Drawve | drawve@uark.edu
Ph.D. (2015) University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Dr. Grant Drawve is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining UA, Grant was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Rutgers-Newark with a dual appointment between the Department of Psychology and School of Criminal Justice. Grant has previously assisted on multiple Project Safe Neighborhood initiatives. Currently, Grant is on the Executive Committee for the National Dialogues on Behavioral Health; and he is involved in a number of projects including risk based policing, enhancing the prediction of crime analysis techniques, tailoring crime analysis approaches to public health outcomes, and understanding the role the environment plays in individual level outcomes. His scholarship appears in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Deviant Behavior, and Journal of Crime and Justice.
Simon Garnier | garnier@njit.edu
Ph.D. (2008) University of Toulouse
Simon Garnier is an Assistant Professor in the Federated Department of Biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). He obtained a PhD from the University of Toulouse (France) under the direction of Dr. Guy Theraulaz and performed his postdoctoral work with Professor Iain Couzin at Princeton University. Simon is now the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying Collective Behaviors and Swarm Intelligence in natural and artificial systems. The Swarm Lab started to operate in July 2012 and its research aims to reveal the detailed functioning of collective intelligence in systems as diverse as ant colonies, human crowds or robotic swarms. The Swarm Lab focuses in particular on the mechanisms of information transfer and integration in large groups that can lead to adaptive (or “intelligent”) collective responses to environmental challenges.
Visiting Research Fellows
2013 | Fall
Oren Gur is a Doctoral Candidate in Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His dissertation focuses on the life experiences and narrative practices of people who use illicit substances and engage in risky drinking behavior while attending professional or graduate school (law, medicine, business; social and interdisciplinary sciences), a high-status hard-to-reach population that mostly avoids contact with police and the criminal justice system. Oren's interests include applying spatial technologies (e.g., RTM, GPS) and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., MRI) to criminology and policing, and the relationship between micro and macro influences on the application of law in police encounters with diverse subgroups.
2013 | Summer [Link]
Renee Zahnow is a Postgraduate Student at the University of Queensland. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honors- first class) with a Criminology/Psychology major in 2009. Renee is a Research Officer for the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. In this role she works with the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), a longitudinal survey of social processes and policing in communities in Australia (http://www.uq.edu.au/accs/). Her research interests include spatial and temporal crime patterns and urban criminology, specifically the impact of community composition on community processes like informal social control, disorder and crime.
2013 | Fall
Oren Gur is a Doctoral Candidate in Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His dissertation focuses on the life experiences and narrative practices of people who use illicit substances and engage in risky drinking behavior while attending professional or graduate school (law, medicine, business; social and interdisciplinary sciences), a high-status hard-to-reach population that mostly avoids contact with police and the criminal justice system. Oren's interests include applying spatial technologies (e.g., RTM, GPS) and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., MRI) to criminology and policing, and the relationship between micro and macro influences on the application of law in police encounters with diverse subgroups.
2013 | Summer [Link]
Renee Zahnow is a Postgraduate Student at the University of Queensland. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honors- first class) with a Criminology/Psychology major in 2009. Renee is a Research Officer for the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. In this role she works with the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), a longitudinal survey of social processes and policing in communities in Australia (http://www.uq.edu.au/accs/). Her research interests include spatial and temporal crime patterns and urban criminology, specifically the impact of community composition on community processes like informal social control, disorder and crime.