Today we bring you another look at key field partners who have helped make the Dane County PSA RCT one of the A2J Lab’s signature series. Part I covered the work of the County’s two Assessors, who perform the essential work of populating the PSA’s risk factors and generating its recommendations day in and day out.
Our featured civil servants for this post come from the Dane County Criminal Justice Council: Coordinator Colleen Clark-Bernhardt and Research Analyst Noemi Reyes. The Lab has been extremely fortunate to collaborate with both of them. Although all of our partners have been indispensable, Colleen and Noemi have played a unique role in this study, handling the bulk of the week-to-week operational oversight. They are, respectively, our primary contacts for systemic implementation and data collection. Colleen, in her capacity as Criminal Justice Coordinator, has spearheaded the inter-agency adoption of the PSA. Noemi, a SQL coding and all-around data whiz, has shepherded us through the same databases that the Assessors routinely use. We at the Lab have piggy-backed on their expertise to build capacity for tracking study-eligible case outcomes over the next two years.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Colleen and Noemi the day after the RCT’s launch. During our conversation, I asked for their thoughts on the evidence-based sea change in Dane County’s criminal justice system:
Stay tuned for the final installment in this series, in which members of the Dane County bench and the District Attorney contribute their thoughts on the PSA and our study!
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