~ RGVRC Affiliate Scholar ~

Joel Capellan, PhD, is an associate professor of criminal justice at John Jay College. He received a PhD in criminal justice from the CUNY Graduate Center/John Jay College in 2016. His research interests center around gun violence, the intersection of race and policing, and policy evaluation. Capellan has published over three dozen articles on these subjects. This work has been featured in multiple national media outlets, such as The Guardian, NPR, New York Magazine, Univision, and ABC News. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy appointed Capellan to the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium as a representative for the state.

In addition to research, Capellan has considerable experience training, managing, and implementing policy projects in Central America. I am a co-principal investigator in the Academy for Security Analysis funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Capellan developed and taught courses in policing, data analysis, policy evaluation, and spatial analysis of crime to participants from the public safety sector, local government agencies, and civil society organizations from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. During this project, Dr. Capellan collaborated with Poder Judicial (Supreme Court), Secretaria de Seguridad (National Police), Secretaria de Educacion (Department of Education), Mancomunidad de Atlantida, and Jovenes Contra la Violencia (Youths Against Violence) in Honduras to implement and evaluate their USAID-funded projects. He works for the Research Director Inmate Survey and Accusatorial Transition Report, which aims to bring unprecedented insights into the lives, judicial process, and current conditions of inmates in Central America.