Victor “Vic” St. John joined Child Trends in 2019 as a research scientist in the youth development program area. He looks forward to interorganizational collaborations that use research to inform and improve outcomes for at-risk and criminal justice involved youth.

Previously, he served as the director of research and analysis for NYC’s Board of Correction, where he led mixed method research projects that directly informed practices and policies related to restrictive housing units, conditions of confinement for the youth population, and the prevention of victimization within NYC jails. Prior to that, Victor supervised juvenile facilities in conjunction with NYC’s Close to Home Initiative, facilitated cognitive based interventions with incarcerated youth under the first social impact bond in the U.S., and evaluated and provided technical support for various government and NGO initiatives (e.g., NYC’s Mayoral Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety) while at the John Jay Research and Evaluation Center.

Victor’s experience also includes teaching criminal justice courses (e.g., juvenile justice, corrections, data analysis, advanced research methods, etc.) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and for the Rutgers University NJ Scholarship and Transformative in Prison initiative. He earned a BS in Criminology at SUNY Old Westbury, an MA in Criminal Justice at John Jay College, and is completing his final year of the PhD program at John Jay College.

Victor’s research interests include juvenile justice, race and justice, corrections, reentry, justice policy and criminal justice architecture. His technical skills consist of the use of Structured Query Language, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Excel and STATA for data analyses and the use of psychometric properties to design surveys and interview guides. His research can be found in peer-reviewed journals including Critical Criminology, The Prison Journal, Race and Justice, and Race and Social Problems.