ILJ Staff


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Staff Information

Laura H. Clark

Laura H. Clark is responsible for all aspects of conference planning for ILJ, including administration, budgets, logistics, marketing, on-site management, and documentation. In this capacity, she has coordinated 15 national conferences, and 65 other meetings and training sessions. Ms. Clark has a wide range of conference management and marketing experience. Previous to joining ILJ, she worked as a Federal Events Manager for the National Small Business Council, Inc., and spent two years as a sales representative for the Pillsbury Company. Ms. Clark has a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.

Edward F. Connors

Edward F. Connors has over 26 years experience in criminal justice consulting, legal counseling, and law enforcement field work. He has directed or participated in more than 300 criminal justice projects and has worked with more than 200 law enforcement agencies since 1973. He has directed more than 50 comprehensive management studies of law enforcement agencies, recently assisting many of these agencies in implementing community policing. Areas of expertise include law enforcement management and operations, strategic planning, community policing, narcotics control, legal analysis and research, and program evaluation. Mr. Connors has a Master's degree in Criminal Justice and is an attorney specializing in criminal law and police civil liability. He formerly worked for the U.S. Marshal Service, Washington, D.C.

Michelle Crespo

Michelle Crespo works primarily on ILJ’s justice-related conference series. She organizes pre-, post-, and onsite support and materials for the meetings. Her previous professional experience includes event planning at Mount Washington Conference Center in Baltimore for United States Fidelity & Guaranty. Ms. Crespo earned her B.A. degree in International Relations at Western Maryland College.

Cheron DuPree

Cheron DuPree works, on ILJ's behalf, on evaluations of justice programs such as those initiated under the Violence Against Women Act, management of technical assistance in the areas of juvenile justice and gang violence, and study of correctional treatment facilities such as those in the District of Columbia. She has conducted other studies involving crime mapping and organization of community support for law enforcement. Ms. DuPree has broad experience in qualitative and quantitative methods to compile historical analyses of programs, showing their effectiveness and growth. She also has experience in developing quality assurance procedures, surveys, agency budgets, and grants. In North Carolina, Ms. DuPree gained extensive knowledge of district and superior court processes; and she has performed case research, prepared briefs and motions, and worked with witnesses and victims. Her undergraduate studies were in Criminal Justice, with concentrations in law enforcement and corrections. She has a Master's degree in Public Administration, with a focus on program development and evaluation.

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Beverly R. Fletcher

Dr. Beverly Fletcher is a specialist in human services, organizational development, and correctional studies. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in organizational development and public management at The American University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Oklahoma. She was principal investigator for the Project for Recidivism Research and Female Inmate Training (PRRFIT) in Oklahoma. Following that criminal justice research project on women prisoners in Oklahoma prisons, she authored Women Prisoners: A Forgotten Population, Praeger, 1993. She has also studied problems of substance abuse among female offenders. Dr. Fletcher has developed curricula for graduate students and researchers with interests in individual, societal, organizational, and systemic factors influencing arrest, incarceration, and recidivism. She has published scholarly works on organizational transformation, theory and practice.

M. Elizabeth Fraser

M. Elizabeth Fraser has over 15 years experience in communications, editorial, scientific writing, senior administrative, and technical positions. For ILJ, Ms. Fraser has written and designed HTML materials for the company's Web site, written marketing materials and articles for the media, edited reports, and written and overseen production of proceedings for more than 20 national conferences covering crime related research and evaluation, drug control initiatives, sentencing, juvenile issues and gangs, community policing, and social solutions to violent crime. She previously served as Senior Project Assistant at the National Academy of Sciences, and has been a technical editor for Byrd Press. Ms. Fraser studied health sciences at the College of William and Mary and earned an A.S. in Computer Sciences at the University of Maryland.

Alisa Gentili

Alisa Gentili works primarily on ILJ’s justice-related conference series. She organizes pre-, post-, and onsite support and materials for the meetings. Her previous professional experience includes event planning and recruiting for Foodshare, a Connecticut non-profit organization. Ms. Gentili earned her B.A. degree in Communication Sciences at the University of Connecticut.

Randall Guynes

Dr. Randall Guynes has over 20 years experience in criminal justice. He has directed national and local studies and projects on such topics as correctional industries prison education programs, case assignment impact on criminal court productivity, costs of processing offenders through the criminal justice system, and use of alternative correctional options. He has also conducted over a dozen organization and management studies of county jails. In these studies, Dr. Guynes uses sophisticated statistical techniques to project long-term jail populations and has developed computer models to examine the effects of policy options on future prison and jail populations. He has also developed and analyzed computer information systems for a variety of different research and correctional uses. Dr. Guynes has a Ph.D. in Political Science.

Deborah A. Haley

Deborah A. Haley has a wide range of experience focused on law enforcement, court administration, public policy analysis, management systems, and organizational theory. In building her expertise in community policing, she has investigated permanent beat assignments; assisted in management studies of police departments changing to community policing; and created a training module on Citizen Police Academies and Community Network Centers. Ms. Haley is also involved with NIJ's Public Acceptance of Less-Than-Lethal Technologies Program and has provided extensive research and support to other ILJ projects. Previous to joining ILJ, she played an instrumental role in the management of North Carolina's Administrative Officers Management Program and served as a research assistant for North Carolina's Administrative Office of the Courts, Research and Planning Division. Ms. Haley has a Master's Degree in Public Administration, the Administration of Justice.

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Kathleen Keough

Kathleen Keough works primarily on ILJ’s justice related conference series. She independently organizes pre-, post-, and onsite support and materials for the meetings. Her previous professional experience includes copywriting and fundraising for Peace Corps volunteer programs. She earned her B.A. degree at George Washington University.

J. Thomas McEwen

Dr. J. Thomas McEwen has more than 28 years experience in criminal justice and is a nationally recognized expert in quantitative analysis applied to law enforcement. Dr. McEwen provides expert consultation in evaluation techniques, staffing and resource allocation, management information systems, community policing, and computer crime. He has directed numerous national evaluations and assessments for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, on such topics as differential police response, community policing, police use of less than lethal weapons, gang crime prosecution, and criminal justice modelling. He has also directed or participated in more than 35 police management studies. Dr. McEwen has worked with the research and planning divisions of the St. Louis and Memphis police departments and has published numerous reports and journal articles. He has a Master's degree in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Mathematics.

Neal Miller

Neal Miller has over 20 years experience in legal and criminal justice research, evaluation, and policy development. Mr. Miller, an attorney, has expertise in court operations and correctional systems and has also conducted numerous legal analyses on topics as diverse as civil liability for police use of less than lethal weapons, Section 1983 litigation, state legislation for correctional industries, and state criminal procedure laws affecting local speedy trial initiatives. Recent empirical research studies have included an examination of factors affecting attorney choice of forum in civil litigation and use of juvenile criminal history records in adult court proceedings. Mr. Miller continues to provide both legal and consulting expertise to federal, state, and local agencies in correctional industries, civil liability, and other areas. Mr. Miller has taught a course at The American University Law School on the use of statistics in litigation, and he has published over 40 articles and books.

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Diana M. Musselman

Ms. Musselman has been Administrations Manager for ILJ for five years. Her responsibilities include overseeing the administrative staff and their workload; proposal coordination between writers and production staff; and accounts payable/receivable for the organization. Ms. Musselman also coordinates vendor relations, equipment and maintenance agreements, and building maintenance.

Rachana Pandey

Rachana Pandey works on the cross-site evaluation of locally initiated research partnerships for NIJ; assessment of problem solving in the Ft. Myers Police Department in Florida; organizational transformation to community policing; and analysis of citizen encounter data from the Tempe Police Department in Arizona. Ms. Pandey has substantial survey experience, having worked on a national survey of community policing training and a major survey to assess the needs of Illinois criminal justice agencies. She earned her Master’s degree in Sociology, with a focus on research methods, data analysis, and program evaluation and has a B. A. degree in Psychology. She is presently participating in the doctoral program in Public Policy at George Mason University.

Heather Perez

Heather Perez coordinates for ILJ the operations of the Regional Community Policing Institutes (RCPIs). She has experience in state and local criminal justice program management and evaluation, research and data analysis for justice and corrections projects, and coordination of agency resources and services. Ms. Perez earned both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska.

Joan M. Peterschmidt

Ms. Peterschmidt has expertise as a librarian and in survey database management. She is skilled in many popular software packages for wordprocessing and records control. She also has broad office management experience, with oversight in accounts payable, personnel, and financial reporting for grantor agencies. In addition to supervising production of reports and proposals, Ms. Peterschmidt proofreads and does copyediting for the company.

Brenda Uekert

Dr. Brenda Uekert has an extensive background in research methodology, criminal justice, and domestic violence. She has worked with both outcome and process evaluations in a law enforcement setting. Currently, she is conducting a nationwide evaluation of S.T.O.P. subgrants awarded under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994. She is overseeing the evaluative component that addresses special law enforcement and prosecution units. Dr. Uekert is also assessing locally initiated research partnerships funded by the National Institute of Justice. She earned her B.S. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, also in Sociology, at Syracuse University.

Barbara Webster

Barbara Webster has more than 15 years experience in criminal justice consulting, research, and publications. She manages several technical assistance contracts for the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, related to community policing, drugs, and gangs. Her research for the Department of Justice and other clients has resulted in publications on a range of topics, including community policing, drug abuse prevention and enforcement, domestic violence, victim assistance, money laundering, urban gang enforcement, and others. Ms. Webster is also experienced as a principal investigator on police management studies for local government clients. Before joining ILJ, Ms. Webster developed juvenile justice and delinquency prevention programs as Assistant Director of the Youth Services Commission, Alexandria, Virginia.

Gerald L. Williams

Dr. Williams directs the Regional Community Policing Institute Project on behalf of ILJ. He has broad experience in police management and training, having served as the Executive Director of the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute at Sam Houston State University in Texas. He has taught criminal justice at several universities; and at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, Dr. Williams directed the Law Enforcement Education & Research Program. He was a faculty member in North Carolina State’s Department of Public Administration and at the University of Colorado. For the six years prior to that, he was the Chief of Police in Aurora, Colorado; and he also served as Chief of Police in Arvada, Colorado. He has published numerous articles in the law enforcement field, among them "Community Policing and Accreditation: A Content Analysis of CALEA Standards," in Quantifying Quality in Policing, Police Executive Research Forum (1995); and Turning Concept Into Practice: The Aurora, Colorado Story, Michigan State University.

 
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