Nancy G. La Vigne
Nancy G. La Vigne is director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she leads a staff of over 35 researchers and oversees a research portfolio of more than three dozen active projects spanning a wide array of crime, justice, and public safety topics. Before being appointed as director in 2009, La Vigne served for eight years as a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, directing projects on prisoner reentry, crime prevention, policing, and the evaluation of criminal justice technologies.
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, the research, technology, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). She later served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs within DOJ. She 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 interests focus 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.
Dr. 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.