Research Scientist 1/2, Division of Criminal Justice Services
Minimum Qualifications:
Research Scientists must possess a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree and two (2) years of experience in the field of Criminal Justice research. Candidates may be appointed to either Research Scientist 1, SG-18, or Research Scientist 2, SG-22, depending on their level of education, type of work experience, and the specific work assignment as determined by the hiring panel.
Research Scientist 1, SG-18: Bachelor’s degree and two years of professional research experience in the field of Criminal Justice; or a master’s degree in Criminal Justice or a related field and one year of such experience.
Research Scientist 2, SG-22: Bachelor’s degree and three years of professional research experience in the field of Criminal Justice; or a master’s degree in a Criminal Justice or a related field may substitute for one year of experience, and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice or related field may substitute for an additional year of experience.
Preferred Qualifications: Preferred qualifications include extensive experience designing and conducting criminal justice research; proficiency using SPSS and/or Stata programs to merge and analyze complex datasets and validate the quality of data; and experience summarizing findings in narrative form. The preferred candidate will have a master’s degree or higher in criminal justice or related field.
Duties Description:
Under the direction of a Manager, Program Research Specialist, or Research Scientist, the incumbent will conduct social science research and analysis related to the investigation of system, social, and behavioral issues within the field of criminal justice and/or with justice-involved populations. Research may include the study of youth behavior, family court decision-making, law enforcement activity, adult criminal behavior, court case processing, sentencing, the impact of programming and treatment on behavior, reoffending and desistance from crime, and criminogenic factors. Research may evaluate the impact of major legislative changes, such as bail reform, gun violence initiatives, and raising the age of criminal responsibility. Specific duties may include, but are not limited to:
• Plan, design, and execute criminal justice research projects, including developing research questions, formulating research hypotheses, identifying an appropriate research design and methodology, and interpreting findings;
• Conduct evaluation studies to measure the causal effect of program or policy interventions using advanced statistical analyses;
• Extract and analyze criminal justice data and prepare formal statistical reports for public dissemination and publication on the DCJS website;
• Develop data visualizations showing criminal justice statistics and trends for public consumption, using software such as Tableau;
• Use a wide range of research methods and data sources to conduct research on criminal justice system activity and behavior, and the causes and correlates of adult and youth offending behavior. Data sources may include, but are not limited to: criminal arrest records, adult and juvenile court records, probation case management records, risk and needs assessment records, juvenile diversion records, treatment program records, law enforcement shooting and use of force records, and data from other agencies and organizations;
• Use analytic and statistical software packages such as SPSS, Stata, Structured Query Language (SQL) Plus, and SQL Developer to extract data from different Oracle and SQL-based systems and create analytic data files by matching individual records across multiple data sources;
• Prepare formal reports which describe study objectives, research methodology, data collection, and key findings;
• Prepare and present formal presentations of research findings to guide and inform program management.
