Prior to her appointment as Dean of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, Dr. Nancy La Vigne was the director of the National Institute of Justice. As director, she led the U.S. Department of Justice’s research, development and evaluation agency, overseeing a wide array of social science research projects, technology initiatives and forensic activities focused on improving public safety and ensuring the fairness and effectiveness of the justice system.
Previously, La Vigne served as a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and led the Council’s Task Force on Policing. From 2009 to 2019, she served as vice president of justice policy at the Urban Institute, leading a staff of over 50 researchers and overseeing a research portfolio of more than three dozen active projects spanning a wide array of crime, justice, and public safety topics. From 2014 to 2016, La Vigne also served as executive director for the congressionally mandated bipartisan Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections Reform.
Prior to joining the Urban Institute, La Vigne was the founding director of the Crime Mapping Research Center (since renamed the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety program) at the National Institute of Justice. She later served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs. La Vigne has held positions as research director for the Texas sentencing commission, research fellow at the Police Executive Research Forum, and consultant to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Her research has focused on criminal justice evaluation, prisoner reentry, policing, crime prevention, and the spatial analysis of crime and criminal behavior. She has published widely on these topics, appearing in a variety of scholarly journals and practitioner publications.
La Vigne holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College, a master’s in public affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, and a doctorate from the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
