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CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG): Overview

ISLG is an institute within the City University of New York. The Institute’s mission is to help achieve improvements in the financing, delivery, and measurement of critical public services by assisting current and future leaders in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector, in the U.S. and internationally, by offering research, technical assistance, and education and training. The Institute’s director, Michael Jacobson, previously served as New York City’s Probation and Correction Commissioner and president of the Vera Institute of Justice.

Project Description

ISLG is hiring a Senior Research Associate to work on the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a $100 million initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.  In 2015, the Foundation awarded 20 jurisdictions $150,000 grants and expert counsel to create plans that will lead to fairer, more effective local justice systems. Many of the sites then received between $1 and $3.5 million of implementation funding in 2016 and 2017 to implement their plans for reform.

SJC sites have set ambitious goals for lowering their jail populations, ranging from 15 percent to 34 percent; and are working to reduce racial and ethnic disparities across the system as well. Their plans employ an array of local solutions, ranging from diversion programs to operational changes aimed at reducing case processing times to expanded community-based treatment options.

ISLG is one of several organizations providing technical assistance and counsel to the 20 jurisdictions as they plan and implement reforms. Our primary role is to monitor and assess the performance of participating sites to demonstrate progress over time and help sites make adjustments in practices as needed. Specifically, using local criminal justice data from each site, we are working to create and track performance measures related to the broad goals and objectives of the initiative—reducing jail populations and disparities in those populations—and specific strategies implemented to achieve those goals and objectives. To accommodate the measurement of strategies across the criminal justice system, we have created a comprehensive performance measurement framework that includes indicators at key decision points ranging from arrest to post-disposition community supervision.

In addition to overseeing performance measurement, ISLG serves as the data liaison for the initiative, collecting and managing local system-wide criminal justice data for all 20 sites in support of the Challenge’s broader research and evaluation agenda. ISLG also provides broader strategic planning and analytical support to the Foundation and other Safety and Justice Challenge partners on an ongoing basis.

Position Description

ISLG is looking to hire a Senior Research Associate (SRA) to lead and oversee data collection, data management, and performance measurement work in several sites as the implementation work expands. The SRA will report to the Project Director, and will work closely with other project staff on all project activities. Specifically, the SRA will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Developing data requests and data collection protocols for multiple criminal justice agencies within each site
• Negotiating multi-party data use agreements (DUAs) with sites
• Helping sites prepare case-level data files for initiative work
• Cleaning, coding, merging, and preparing administrative data files for analysis
• Working with sites to develop and operationalize performance measures
• Building performance measures from case-level data
• Creating dashboards and other progress reports
• Analyzing and interpreting performance measurement trends—including policy and practice implications of those trends
• Conducting other quantitative analyses as needed
• Documenting methodology, validation, and testing to facilitate replication of analyses
• Providing technical assistance to sites on projected implementation impacts, as needed
• Managing the dissemination of data to external project partners
• Developing codebooks, file specifications, and other resource documents for sites and other SJC partners
• Working closely with site data and policy partners, and other SJC technical assistance providers, on all aspects of the work
• Preparing and carrying out presentations for a wide range of audiences
• Traveling to initiative-wide meetings and sites as needed
• Ensuring that all work carried out in assigned sites is coordinated with other ISLG team members’ work in other sites
• Supervising analyst-level and associate-level staff on the abovementioned project activities

As ISLG’s project portfolio evolves, the SRA may have opportunities to work on other projects in addition to the SJC. The SRA will also contribute to developing the ISLG’s broader research agenda, together with the Institute’s Research Director and other senior research staff.