The 2024-2025 academic year has ended, and the Criminal Justice department wanted to take some time to celebrate our graduating MA and PhD students! 9 MA and PhD students walked the stage at the CLA graduation ceremony on May 7th.

Rosalee Banks, Kaela Brace, Katie Denyer, Jacob Jimenez, Yasmin Laguda, Linda Lo, Rebecca Pohle and Morgan Zehner made up our eight MA grads. While most are heading for the workforce, a few are going on to graduate school, including Rosalee who will rejoin the Criminal Justice department here at Temple this fall as one our newest PhD students.

 Jenn Stanley was our PhD graduate in May, after successfully defending her dissertation this April entitled ‘Comorbidity Conundrum: Assessing Treatment Participation and Recidivism Outcomes Among Incarcerated Individuals with Co-Occurring Opioid Use and Mental Health Disorders’. Further, Jenn and fellow PhD student Sarah DeLucca, just had their paper published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, a leading substance use journal. Based on data from the JJ-TRIALS project, they found significant relationships between behavioral health status and recidivism among youth on probation, with youth with co-occurring mental health and substance use issues having the highest risk of recidivism. In addition, they found that initiating treatment reduces recidivism risk, but the effect varied by behavioral health status.

Congrats, all! We’re proud of all our graduates of the spring Class of 2025!