Christy Visher
Faculty Associate
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
302-831-6107
Biography
Christy Visher (Ph.D. in Sociology, Indiana University) is Director of CDHS and Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice. She is Principal Investigator of the five-year, NIDA-funded collaborative, Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS). CJ-DATS is studying organizational strategies for improving the implementation of evidence-based practices for substance-abusing offenders as they leave prison and return to the community. Prior to joining the University of Delaware, she was Principal Research Associate with the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. At the Urban Institute, she directed Returning Home, a longitudinal study of men and women released from prison in four states, and was co-Principal Investigator of the Multi-Site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. From 1993 to 2000, she was Science Advisor to the Director of the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. Her research interests focus on communities and crime, substance use, criminal careers, the role of social factors in criminal desistance, and the evaluation of strategies for crime control and prevention. She has published widely on these and other topics in numerous social science journals, and co-edited Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America, with Jeremy Travis.