Meet our Board (2024-2026)

 

The DEC Executive Board is comprised of the Division’s current officers, immediate past Chair, and three Executive Counselors. The Board forms policies for the Division, provides advice and decides the budget for the Division, and approve committee chairs. The Division Chair will convene the Executive Board.

 

Chair: Dr. Rylan Simpson

Rylan Simpson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. He received his Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine. He regularly conducts experiments, including in the laboratory and in the field, and teaches courses regarding the use of experimental methods in criminological research. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Research Advisory Committee, and a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s Research Advisory Committee. He is also the recipient of numerous awards for his policing scholarship and engagement with policing officials, including the Outstanding Early Career Experimental Criminologist Award (ASC DEC), the Outstanding Collective Body of Research Award – Policing (ANZSOC), and the Best Paper of 2022 Award (Police Practice and Research). As an applied scholar, Rylan has participated in more than 1,600 hours of ride-alongs with police agencies from around the world, including in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

 

Vice-Chair: Dr. Jessica Huff

Jessica Huff is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on policing and program evaluation. She is specifically interested in using experimental methods to examine whether police programs and policies work and whether they are fair. Dr. Huff is a National Institute of Justice Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (NIJ LEADS) Academic who has partnered with police agencies across the U.S. to evaluate programs including violence reduction strategies, intelligence-led approaches to gun crime, use of force training, and body-worn cameras. She is currently working with the Tacoma Police Department to examine the impact of gun crime identification and investigations technology. She is also working on a statewide evaluation of police officer retention efforts in Ohio.

 
 
 
 
 

Secretary/Treasurer: Dr. Kyle McLean

Dr. McLean graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2018 and was named a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Sciences (LEADS) Academic in 2019. Dr. McLean works with law enforcement officers across the country to assess and recommend evidence-based practices for police departments. Dr. McLean is leading a team of researchers that was recently awarded more than $892,000 from the National Institute of Justice to evaluate a police de-escalation training program.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Executive Counselor: Dr. Colleen Berryessa

Dr. Colleen Berryessa is an Associate Professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Her research, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, considers how psychological processes, perceptions, attitudes, and social contexts affect the criminal justice system, particularly related to courts, sentencing, and forms of punishment broadly defined. She primarily examines these issues, using interdisciplinary methodologies, in relation to three areas: 1) how psychological and social phenomena influence public perceptions, support, and subsequent consideration of practices, policies, and the philosophical foundations surrounding sentencing; 2) how psychological and social phenomena influence the discretion and decision-making of criminal justice actors during the sentencing process; and 3) how psychological and social phenomena bear on motivations for and effects of expanded forms of legal and social punitiveness beyond the formal punishment stages of the criminal justice system. Colleen received her Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Before Penn, she graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Government and Mind, Brain, and Behavior, and she served as a CIRGE research fellow at Stanford University.

 

Executive Counselor: Dr. Lois James

Lois James is the Assistant Dean of Research and the PhD Program Director in the Washington State University (WSU) College of Nursing. She is also the Director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center (SPRC) at WSU, where she focuses on the impact of sleep loss, fatigue, stress, and bias on performance and safety in shift workers such as police officers, firefighters, health care personnel, and military personnel. She has received multiple honors and awards for her work and is internationally recognized as a leading expert in her field. She specializes in developing, implementing, and evaluating fatigue risk management, sleep education, and anti-bias training programs. She is the founding Director of Counter Bias Training Simulation (CBTsim), a simulation-based anti-bias training program that has been found to improve the outcomes of police-community member encounters and promote community perceptions of police fairness. Dr. James’s work has been published extensively in academic journals, practitioner magazines, and mainstream media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

 

 

Executive Counselor: Dr. Sue-Ming Yang

Sue-Ming Yang is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. She received her PhD from the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology. Her current research focuses on emergency responses to community mental health issues, crime and place, broken windows theory and urban disorder, experimental research methods, and international terrorism trends and eco-terrorism in the U.S. Additionally, she also focuses on understanding the relationship between stereotypes, race, and disorder in urban settings through laboratory experiments. Prior to her appointment at Mason, she was an associate professor at National Chung Cheng University and received the Young Scholar Award.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Immediate Past Chair: Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe

Jerry focuses on evidence-based policing and crime analysis, and he works with police agencies around the world on leadership, crime reduction and criminal intelligence strategy. After an ice-climbing accident ended a decade-long career with London’s Metropolitan Police, he earned a first class honors degree and a PhD from the University of Nottingham. He has published over 100 research articles and nine books, including most recently Reducing Crime: A Companion for Police Leaders. Ratcliffe has been a research adviser to the FBI and the Philadelphia Police Commissioner, an instructor for the ATF intelligence academy, and he is a member of the FBI Law Enforcement Education and Training Council. He is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA.