Mark your calendars — Convocation is happening on Monday, August 31! This is your official welcome to the Rutgers-Newark community! Join us as we kick off the year with energy, pride, and a whole lot of Raider spirit. ❤️🖤

Two Rutgers SCJ PhD alums now lead Temple's Criminal Justice Department. Dr. Aunshul Rege (PhD '12) is Department Chair and runs the CARE Lab; Dr. Amarat Zaatut (PhD '16) is Graduate Chair. "We are fortunate to have two Rutgers alumni serving in key leadership roles," says Rege.

Kayla Blas starts as a full-time Probation Officer this summer. She completed SCJ's accelerated dual-degree master's and won the Director's Award for Practical and Professional Excellence. #AlumniSpotlight #RutgersSCJ #CriminalJustice

SCJ's Dr. Alex Gimenez-Santana brought the Newark Public Safety Collaborative's (NPSC) nationally recognized data-informed community engagement model to the national stage last week at the 2026 Community Violence Intervention Conference in Los Angeles.

New transfer students at Rutgers SCJ, join us in person today at 6pm at the Center for Law & Justice in Newark to meet the community before classes start. Register: go.rutgers.edu/scjtrinpersonjuly27 #RutgersSCJ #TransferStudents #CriminalJustice #RutgersNewark

Crime and justice don't stop at any border. Neither does the commitment of our #RutgersSCJ students. From our 50th Anniversary Documentary:

Alum quote: Debbie Regan spent 30 years as a paralegal before discovering an unexpected second calling: research. Through the Newark Public Safety Collaborative, she picked up spatial analysis and financial crimes certifications, and just won SCJ's Director's Award for Scholarly Achievement.

Dr. Sara Wakefield's research traces how mass incarceration reaches families, not just individuals -- from her book Children of the Prison Boom to new 2024 work on how criminal legal system contact ripples between siblings. #FacultySpotlight #RutgersSCJ #CriminalJustice #Research #Sociology

New first-year students -- come meet us in person before your first day. The Rutgers School of Criminal Justice is hosting an in-person meet and greet today at 6:00pm at the Center for Law & Justice, 123 Washington Street in Newark. Register: go.rutgers.edu/scjfyinpersonjuly14

Dr. Nerea Marteache (PhD '13) directs the Center for Criminal Justice Research at @csusb.bsky.social, where her research partners with @metrolinksocal.bsky.social to study passenger safety on commuter rail. 2022 Outstanding Community Engagement Award winner. #CriminalJustice #Research #RutgersNewark

Meet Dr. Michael Ostermann, Professor at SCJ and Co-Director of our new CLEAR Institute. Institutional and community corrections, rehabilitation and reentry, and how they intersect with public policy are his primary research areas.

Whether it's Jody Miller studying gendered and racial violence, Nusret Sahin studying police trust, or Ebony Ruhland studying probation fees, the Rutgers SCJ is playing a role in better understanding our complicated country. Happy Independence Week, enjoy responsibly!

July is Disability Pride Month. People with mental health disabilities are 10x more likely to be incarcerated than to receive psychiatric care. Our jails became the country's largest mental health institutions, and SCJ research has spent decades investigating what we can do about it.

In the 1990s, former Dean Ronald Clarke and colleagues David Weisburd and Marcus Felson posited that crime wasn't something society simply had to respond to. It could be anticipated, interrupted, and prevented.

Anthony Braga (PhD '97) helped build focused deterrence -- now one of the most replicated gun violence reduction strategies in U.S. policing. From SCJ to @upenn.edu, and everywhere cities needed answers. #CriminalJustice #Criminology #GunViolence #CrimePolicy #SCJ

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Jason Silver studies why people think about punishment the way they do, tracing how moral values, beliefs about evil, and character judgments shape criminal justice attitudes and policy. We're lucky to have him!!

The Newark Public Safety Collaborative: a Rutgers SCJ anchor initiative that partnered with the Newark Mayor's Office and more than 45 community organizations to address crime where it concentrates

Alum spotlight: Dr. Ntasha Bhardwaj, PhD '23. Her research asks what the field has been slow to consider: how does gender inequality shape fear of crime in South Asia? She also co-founded the South Asian Institute of Crime and Justice Studies, creating a hub for a whole area of scholarship.

SCJ's Dr. Pilar Larroulet studies women's reentry: employment, mental health, substance use, and recidivism. Her 2026 paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics uses Chile's lockdown policy shifts to quantify domestic violence impacts. Policy-relevant, rigorous work. #ReentryResearch

From our documentary: NJ-STEP brings college education inside NJ prisons through a partnership with Rutgers, @drewuniversity.bsky.social, @princeton.edu, and @raritanvalleycc.bsky.social. 90% of graduates are employed within a year. #RutgersSCJ #NJSTEP #HigherEd #PrisonEducation #CriminalJustice

Yasemin Irvin-Erickson (PhD '14) is an Assistant Professor at @georgemasonu.bsky.social studying victimization, economic empowerment, and domestic violence. Since leaving SCJ she has led $4.5M+ in research funded by NSF, NIJ, and the World Bank. #CriminalJustice #Criminology #VictimResearch

Happy World Cup!! The School of Criminal Justice staff will be working remotely during weekday FIFA matches in June 2026. The university and school remain open and operating. Please contact staff via email. Information can be found at rscj.newark.rutgers.edu

From our 50th anniversary documentary: 2 SCJ alumni who named the field. Jay Albanese ('81) on SCJ faculty Gerhard Mueller coining 'transnational crime.' Faye Taxman (‘82) on Andrew von Hirsch’s new perspectives in the field.

SCJ alum Dr. Melinda Arnold ('05) has been appointed Chancellor of the University of Tennessee Southern. A published scholar in criminal justice and prison reentry, Dr. Arnold brings over 20 years of higher education leadership to her new role. Congratulations!

Congratulations to our undergraduate Class of 2026.. So proud of each of you.

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Ebony Ruhland, Associate Professor at Rutgers SCJ. Her research: probation revocations and supervision fees, parole board decision-making, police-community relations, and how parental incarceration shapes children's lives.

Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Jennifer Lanterman received the ASUN Service-Learning Faculty Award for leading Nevada's first Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program - where college students and incarcerated individuals learn together at Washoe County Detention Facility.

Happy Pride Month from the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice! 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ folx are central to our community and research. Associate Professor Valerio Bacak examines health risks for incarcerated sexual and gender minority people. Postdoctoral Fellow Juhwan Seo maps trends in queer migration studies.

Alumni spotlight: Amarat Zaatut earned her PhD from Rutgers SCJ on a Fulbright Fellowship. Now an Associate Professor at Temple, she researches Arab immigrant communities and the immigration-crime nexus - and recently received a Russell Sage Foundation grant for her work. We're proud of her.

Congratulations to the Rutgers SCJ Class of 2026. Your degree is just the beginning! We are proud of every one of you. #RutgersSCJ #Graduation #ClassOf2026 #CriminalJustice