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Gary Zajac - Pennsylvania State University. University Park, PA, UNITED STATES

Gary Zajac

DIRECTOR, Justice Center for Research | Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA, UNITED STATES

Dr. Gary Zajac is a Research Associate Professor and a member of the graduate faculty in the College of the Liberal Arts

Industry Expertise (2)

Research

Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise (6)

Public Policy Research and Analysis

Correctional Administration and Policy

Criminal Justice Program Evaluation

Evidence-Based Practice in Offender Intervention

Offender Risk/Needs Factors

Organizational and Administrative Theory

Biography

Dr. Gary Zajac is the founding Managing Director of the Justice Center for Research and Research Associate Professor at The Pennsylvania State University and a member of the graduate faculty in the College of the Liberal Arts. He has been Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on 14 Justice Center projects focusing on courts, corrections, sentencing and policing. His studies at the Center have encompassed racial disparity in capital sentencing, rural criminology, implementation science, inmate social networks, evaluation of domestic relations programs, and specialty courts, including the national evaluation of the Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) Demonstration Field Experiment, funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Dr. Zajac has served for many years as a peer reviewer for the National Institute of Justice and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and for journals including: Drug and Alcohol Dependence, The Prison Journal (also board member) and Criminology and Public Policy. His scholarly work has appeared in many journals and books, including Journal of Experimental Criminology, Criminology and Public Policy, Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior and The Prison Journal. He has advised dozens of state, local and international corrections agencies and organizations on the development of research capacity and the implementation of research-based practice. Prior to joining the Justice Center, Dr. Zajac was Chief of Research and Evaluation in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for thirteen years, where he initiated and led numerous studies and evaluations of PADOC programs and related topics, partnering with external researchers and securing third party grants. The research partnership model that Dr. Zajac developed there won the 2008 Innovations Award from the Council of State Governments, being recognized as a model for knowledge creation and transfer. During Dr. Zajac’s tenure in the PADOC, this model resulted in 18 major grant supported studies totaling over $4 million in external support, and promoted the diffusion of evidence-based practice within the PADOC.

Accomplishments (1)

2008 Innovations Award for Program Evaluation Research System (professional)

Council of State Governments

Education (2)

University of Pittsburgh: Ph.D., Public Administration and Policy 1993

The Pennsylvania State University: B.A., Political Science 1987

Affiliations (2)

  • Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) : Member, Research, Evaluation, Data Collection and Analysis Advisory Committee
  • The Prison Journal : Editorial Board Member and Peer Reviewer

Media Appearances (5)

Fate of death penalty in Pa. hinges on long-awaited report due any day

Burlington Free Press  online

2017-06-14

There are 160 men on death row in Pennsylvania. Despite years of research into the fairness of its use in Pennsylvania, the fate of the death penalty and those men remains in limbo.

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What will happen to Pennsylvania's death penalty?

philly.com  online

2017-05-28

Five times a year, Pennsylvania corrections officials meet inside a white block masonry field house on the grounds of the prison near Penn State, and carry out a mock execution.

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Researchers, Pennsylvania State Police collaborate on countering opioid epidemic

Penn State News  online

2017-02-17

Ongoing research at the Penn State Justice Center for Research is attempting to identify and understand opioid distribution networks and ways to disrupt them.

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Studying the effects of incarceration on women and their families

Penn State News  online

2016-10-21

The number of women in prison has increased dramatically in the last several decades, yet there is little research into women’s experiences in prison and how it affects their families.

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Gary Zajac joins Justice Center for Research as managing director

Penn State News  online

2010-04-19

Gary Zajac, chief of research and evaluation at the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, has been appointed the first managing director of the Penn State Justice Center for Research, a cooperative venture of the College of the Liberal Arts and Outreach.

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Research Grants (3)

Network Mechanisms in a Prison Therapeutic Community

National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism $441,630

Co-Investigator. (Principal Investigator – Derek Kreager (Penn State University). Grant # 1R21AA023210-01A1. August 2015 – July 2017.

Pennsylvania Child Support Enforcement Training Institute

Pennsylvania Department of Human Services $16,625,000

Principal Investigator (for evaluation component). October 2014 – June 2019.

The Prison Inmate Networks Study (PINS)

National Science Foundation $323,814

2015-04-01

Co-Principal Investigator. (Principal Investigator – Derek Kreager (Penn State University). April 2015 – March 2017.

Articles (5)

Where “Old Heads” Prevail: Inmate Hierarchy in a Men’s Prison Unit


American Sociological Review

Derek A. Kreager, Jacob T.N. Young, Dana L. Haynie, Martin Bouchard, David R. Schaefer, Gary Zajac

2017 Research on inmate social order, a once-vibrant area, receded just as U.S. incarceration rates climbed and the country’s carceral contexts dramatically changed. This study returns to inmate society with an abductive mixed-methods investigation of informal status within a contemporary men’s prison unit. We collected narrative and social network data from 133 male inmates housed in a unit of a Pennsylvania medium-security prison. Analyses of inmate narratives suggest that unit “old heads” provide collective goods in the form of mentoring and role modeling that foster a positive and stable peer environment. We test this hypothesis with Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) of peer nomination data. The ERGM results complement the qualitative analysis and suggest that older inmates and inmates who have been on the unit longer are perceived by their peers as powerful and influential. Both analytic strategies point to the maturity of aging and the acquisition of local knowledge as important for attaining informal status in the unit. In summary, this mixed-methods case study extends theoretical insights of classic prison ethnographies, adds quantifiable results capable of future replication, and points to a growing population of older inmates as important for contemporary prison social organization.

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Toward a Criminology of Inmate Networks


Justice Quarterly

Derek A. Kreager, David R. Schaefer, Martin Bouchard, Dana L. Haynie, Sara Wakefield, Jacob Young & Gary Zajac

2015 The mid-twentieth century witnessed a surge of American prison ethnographies focused on inmate society and the social structures that guide inmate life. Ironically, this literature virtually froze in the 1980s just as the country entered a period of unprecedented prison expansion, and has only recently begun to thaw. In this manuscript, we develop a rationale for returning inmate society to the forefront of criminological inquiry, and suggest that network science provides an ideal framework for achieving this end. In so doing, we show that a network perspective extends prison ethnographies by allowing quantitative assessment of prison culture and illuminating basic characteristics of prison social structure that are essential for improving inmate safety, health, and community reentry outcomes. We conclude by demonstrating the feasibility and promise of inmate network research with findings from a recent small-scale study of a maximum-security prison work unit.

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The implementation of Circles of Support and Accountability in the United States


Aggression and Violent Behavior

Ian A.Elliott, GaryZajac

2015 According to estimates from the U.S. National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC), at least 95% of state prisoners are released back to their communities after a period of incarceration. The complex issue of returning individuals convicted of sex offenses to their communities often evokes particular concern for both criminal justice agencies and the general public. Amid increases in the scope and intensity of sex offenders’ supervision, there has been a growing interest among academics, criminal justice practitioners, and faith groups in using restorative justice approaches with this population. Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) is a restorative justice-based community reentry program for sex offenders deemed to be at the highest risk of reoffending and with little or no pro-social community support. This integrative review synthesizes both the previous literature on the effectiveness of CoSA in reducing reoffending with findings from a recent evaluability assessment of CoSA provision in the US. It describes the various forms of implementation, the methods by which CoSA has and can be evaluated, and the possible obstacles that impede rigorous evaluation. The implications for the future implementation and evaluation of CoSA are discussed along with the implications for reentry policy and practice in general.

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Implementation and Outcomes in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Among Female Prisoners


Criminology and Public Policy

Gary Zajac

2015 A body of evidence has emerged over the past several decades about “what works” in rehabilitating criminal offenders (Andrews and Bonta, 2003; MacKenzie, 2006; MacKenzie and Zajac, 2013). Much of this evidential basis is summed up in the risk–need–responsivity (RNR) framework (Andrews and Bonta, 2010), which by now should be sufficiently well known that I will not bother with a summary of it in this brief introductory piece. The “what works” and RNR literatures inform a set “principles of effective offender intervention” that can be used, with appropriate caveats and limitations, as a guide to the design of correctional interventions (Andrews and Bonta, 2003; Van Voorhis, Braswell, and Lester, 2004). These principles direct that any specific type of treatment intervention delivered to criminal justice clients should be supported by evidence of effectiveness in reducing recidivism or having impacts on other criteria of interest (e.g., reducing drug relapse or improving compliance with supervision). One widely used treatment approach that has accumulated a strong basis of support in the research is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). In brief, CBT addresses antisocial cognitions and dysfunctional thinking patterns that support criminal behavior with highly structured behavioral therapies targeting problem solving, decision making, coping mechanisms, peer associates, and other factors, with a strong emphasis not only on learning new skills but also on practicing and rehearsing those skills to instill more prosocial behavioral routines, for example, to help the client deal with high-risk situations (Van Voorhis et al., 2004). A number of studies and meta-analyses have established considerable support for this approach (Landenberger and Lipsey, 2005; Lipsey, Landenberger, and Wilson, 2007; Pearson, Lipton, Cleland, and Yee, 2002; Wilson, Bouffard, and MacKenzie, 2005).

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Predicting Recidivism for Released State Prison Offenders


Criminal Justice and Behavior

Gerald J. Stahler, Jeremy Mennis, Steven Belenko Wayne N. Welsh, Matthew L. Hiller, Gary Zajac

2013 We examined the influence of individual and neighborhood characteristics and spatial contagion in predicting reincarceration on a sample of 5,354 released Pennsylvania state prisoners. Independent variables included demographic characteristics, offense type, drug involvement, various neighborhood variables (e.g., concentrated disadvantage, residential mobility), and spatial contagion (i.e., proximity to others who become reincarcerated). Using geographic information systems (GIS) and logistic regression modeling, our results showed that the likelihood of reincarceration was increased with male gender, drug involvement, offense type, and living in areas with high rates of recidivism. Older offenders and those convicted of violent or drug offenses were less likely to be reincarcerated. For violent offenders, drug involvement, age, and spatial contagion were particular risk factors for reincarceration. None of the neighborhood environment variables were associated with increased risk of reincarceration. Reentry programs need to particularly address substance abuse issues of ex-offenders as well as take into consideration their residential locations.

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