Heidi Bonner, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Bonner is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Criminal Justice in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University (ECU), and is a trustee of the Institute’s Board of Trustees. She received her doctorate in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany, SUNY. Dr. Bonner’s research focuses on the administration of the criminal justice process, with an emphasis on police decision making and the effects of policies and programs on police operations, including intervention in domestic violence. As the recipient of a three-year subcontract from the Office on Violence Against Women, she served as the local evaluator in an evaluation of a project designed to reduce homicide in incidences of domestic violence. Additionally, she has been involved in research with various police departments in New York State and North Carolina, including recent work in the areas of bias based policing; evaluation of CPTED strategies; employee stress and wellness, and response to witness intimidation in intimate partner violence. While at Albany, Dr. Bonner was the recipient of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice’s Distinguished Dissertation and the Walter M. Francis Policing awards, and the Lt. John F. Finn Scholarship. She received the Dean’s Early Career Award at ECU in 2017.
Mark R. Chaires, Ph.D.
Dr. Chaires has thirty years of law enforcement experience, a third of that time spent at the executive management level. His last appointment was as the Police Chief of the Schenectady, NY Police Department. During his tenure there he was the driving force behind many of the agency’s crime control and human resource initiatives, including: Compstat, public surveillance camera system, performance appraisal, and its leadership development program. His research interests include stereotypes, police use of deadly force, and police training. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany. He was the recipient of University at Albany School of Criminal Justice’s Walter M. Francis Policing Award.
Shelagh E. Dorn, Ph.D.
Dr. Dorn is an Assistant Professor with Michigan State University, where she teaches in their Criminal Intelligence Master’s degree program. She also instructs at Clemson University and consults with police departments to solve their data, intelligence, and analyst problems. She was previously the Assistant Director for Technical Assistance and a Senior Research Analyst at the Finn Institute. She has worked extensively in policing, intelligence analysis, and public safety. She is President of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA). She earned a PhD in criminal justice at the University at Albany. Her areas of interest include: intelligence-led policing; evaluation and accountability research; law enforcement best practices; and policing, mental health, and trauma-informed responses.
Chris Harris, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Harris currently works as an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology & Justice Studies at UMass Lowell. He holds a Ph.D. in criminal justice from the University at Albany. His research interests are primarily in police performance and public perceptions of police, as well as evaluation research of various police initiatives. He has been involved in research with various police departments in New York State, including serving as the principal research analyst for Project Safe Neighborhoods in Syracuse, as well as an analyst for the Crime Analysis and Problem Solving partnership between the Albany Police Department and the University at Albany’s School of Criminal Justice. Chris was the recipient of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice’s Distinguished Dissertation and the Walter M. Francis Policing awards.
Shelley S. Hyland, Ph.D.
Dr. Hyland is a statistician in the Law Enforcement Statistics Unit of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. She is also an Adjunct Instructor at Argosy University Online and Brandman University, and previously worked as a data analyst in the fields of criminal justice, kidney transplant, health policy and psychology. In addition, she was a crime analyst for the Schenectady Police Department in New York and a Graduate Research Assistant at the University at Albany. She recently completed a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, and she holds an M.A. in Forensic Psychology and a M.A. in Criminal Justice.
MoonSun Kim, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Kim is currently an Associate Professor at the State University of New York College at Brockport. He earned his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany. Dr. Kim’s research interests include program evaluation, international criminal justice, crime and spatial analysis, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He has an extensive background in statistical and spatial analysis, from which the Institute’s work benefits through his collaboration in examining the effectiveness of strategic and programmatic crime reduction initiatives, such as gun interdiction patrols, wireless video surveillance, and safe passage initiatives.
John D. McCluskey, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. McCluskey is currently a Professor of Criminal Justice at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany in 2002. His research interests include procedural justice, compliance, and criminology. He has worked as a consultant and researcher with a variety of criminal justice agencies throughout the U.S. That research has included the process and outcome evaluation of delinquency intervention programs, violence reduction initiatives, and community partnership-building efforts. His ongoing work with the Detroit Police Department is focused on a National Institute of Justice sponsored evaluation of a gun-violence reduction effort in that city.
Scott W. Phillips, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Phillips is a retired college professor, and he worked as a police officer with the Houston Police Department and Grant Advisor for the Department of Justice COPS Office. He received a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from SUNY Albany. He has served as the Futurist Scholar in Residence with the Behavioral Science Unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. His research focuses on empirical examinations of police officer decision-making and organizational influences on officers’ behavior. His works have appeared in Journal of Criminal Justice, Crime and Delinquency, Police Research and Practice, Policing: An International Journal, and Policing and Society.
Andrew P. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Dr. Wheeler is an assistant professor in the criminology program at the University of Texas at Dallas. He completed his doctoral studies at the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, and he was formerly a senior research analyst with the Finn Institute. His research interests include the spatial analysis of crime, discretionary police behavior, and evaluations of crime reduction programs.
Martha Williams Deane
Ms. Deane is a Principal Administrative Analyst with the New York State Police (NYSP) in the Planning and Research Section, where she has overseen applied research and evaluation involving program, policy, and equipment initiatives for nearly twenty years. She was the NYSP research coordinator for one of the first federal strategies to examine law enforcement and school violence (NIJ-COPS) and as a follow-up, the NYSP developed one of the largest School Resource Officer (SRO) programs in the country, with an evaluation component for which she was responsible. She is certified by NYS Office of Mental Health as a Police-Mental Health Trainer and has conducted numerous trainings with recruits to handle police situations that involve people with emotional disturbances. Prior to her work at the NYSP, Ms. Deane was a Research Investigator at Policy Research Associates, Inc. (PRA), involved in examining police-mental health partnerships at a time when many innovative programs were under development. PRA collaborated with the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and the University of North Carolina-Duke Program on Mental Health Services Research regarding police responses to emotionally disturbed persons and new models of police interactions with the mental health system. Her current research interests include police active shooter evaluation and new collaborations between law enforcement and mental health systems using the Sequential Intercept Model. She holds a Master’s degree in sociology and is an Adjunct Instructor at the University at Albany and the Sage Colleges.
James Frank, Ph.D.
Dr. Frank is the chairperson of the Institute’s Board of Trustees. Dr. Frank is a professor at the University of Cincinnati. He received his J.D. from Ohio Northern University in 1977 and Ph.D. from the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University in 1993. He is presently the Director of the University of Cincinnati Center for Criminal Justice Research. Dr. Frank’s primary research interests include understanding police behavior at the street-level, the formation of citizen attitudes toward the police, and the use of evolving technology by patrol officers. Dr. Frank has published policing articles in Justice Quarterly, Police Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Crime and Delinquency and Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategy and Management.
Reveka V. Shteynberg
Reveka Shteynberg is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University San Bernardino. She is completing a PhD in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany. Her research focuses on how citizens and criminal justice actors navigate the legal system, and often pertains to the implementation and evaluation of programs and policies surrounding legal reforms. Recent projects include evaluating the implementation of, and case outcomes stemming from, the provision of defense counsel to defendants at their first court appearance; examining the role of local legal culture in plea bargaining policies and practices; and evaluating the impact of bail and pretrial detention reforms on case outcomes. In her previous role as a research analyst for the Finn Institute, she conducted systematic social observation coding of police-citizen and police-victim interactions using body-worn and dashboard camera recordings, as well as a family court needs assessment and feasibility evaluation study for Westchester County’s Assigned Counsel program.