About
JSP (Justice System Partners) is a non-profit, multidisciplinary team committed to assisting criminal and juvenile legal systems and community partners with transforming their systems. We help our partners reimagine their work by combining research, technical assistance, and knowledge of evidence-informed strategies. We infuse creativity, innovation, and passion into our work, taking an integrated approach to system transformation to help our partners operationalize meaningful change.
Our Staff
Dr. Jen Lerch
Project Lead & JSP Senior Associate
Dr. Jennifer Lerch is a Senior Associate at Justice System Partners (JSP). Her research focuses on organizational change, system evaluation, behavioral interventions, substance use, community corrections, and reentry. She has over ten years of experience working to design, develop, implement, and evaluate justice systems to help address organizational and client needs. Prior to joining JSP, Jen worked for the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence! (ACE!) where she led evaluation, data collection, and data management and produced important study findings on several large-scale projects, including research studies funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, National Institute of Justice, and National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has expertise in system mapping, measuring disparities in the justice system, and the risk-need-responsivity model and has provided trainings for community providers and criminal justice practitioners across the country. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and regularly presents her work at national and international conferences.
Lauren Henderson
Project Manager & JSP Associate
Lauren Henderson is an Associate at Justice System Partners. Before joining JSP, she worked as a clinical social worker and research assistant in various settings supporting legal system-involved populations and collaborating with legal system stakeholders. Lauren worked as a Research Assistant with the Florida State University Institute for Justice Research and Development while also earning her Master of Social Work. There, she delivered research interviews and conducted qualitative analysis on multiple research projects examining reentry supports. As a clinical social worker, Lauren worked with adults and youths involved in the legal system. She was responsible for conducting assessments and providing substance use treatment and batterer intervention programming. She also provided mitigation services, which included conducting interviews with incarcerated individuals with substance use disorder and trauma history. In this role, she worked collaboratively with attorneys to facilitate the release of those she worked with from incarceration to treatment. This work further ignited her passion for transforming systems to center the voices and support the healing of people impacted by the legal system.
Lauren holds a Bachelor of Social Work and a Master of Social Work, both from Florida State University. Her ultimate goal is to help uplift and amplify the voices of those impacted by the system, and she believes the solutions lie in our communities.
Hallie Allen
Project Coordinator & JSP Associate
Hallie Allen is an Associate for Justice System Partners with 5 years of experience in operations, research, and program management at justice-centered organizations. Before joining JSP, Hallie served at Impact Justice, where she managed technical assistance training deliveries across multiple states/U.S. territories for sexual safety and justice missions in partnership with community partners. In this role, she ensured adult and juvenile corrections facilities received proper legal knowledge on the implementation of federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Standards.
Hallie’s passion for empowering Black people and other marginalized demographics is evident in her unwavering dedication to unraveling the current fabric of the criminal legal system. Throughout Hallie’s academic and professional journey, she has accumulated diverse proficiencies in system areas such as reentry, pre-trial, sentencing, and health treatment. She’s also made significant contributions to research for policy development for more effective indigent defense services and college readiness programs for youth in foster care.
With a Master of Public Administration degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice, Hallie brings an abundance of insight and expertise to her commitment to creating humane justice outcomes. She accomplished her academic awards at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, respectively.
Dr. Tameka Vaught Williams
Director of Staff Investment and Curiosity
Dr. Tameka Vaught Williams is the Director of Staff Investment and Curiosity for Justice System Partners. She has over 15 years of experience working in higher education and the criminal and juvenile systems. Tameka began her career as an adult probation officer and later transitioned to a juvenile court counselor. In both positions, she provided high-quality case management and oversight to court-involved adults and youth. Later in her career, she shifted to the quality assurance aspect of public safety and was responsible for implementing, supervising, and evaluating community and evidence-based programs.
Before joining JSP, Tameka was a Clinical Assistant Professor at North Carolina Central University. In this role, she taught numerous criminal justice courses and served as the Director of Student Support. She is well-versed in curriculum development, student coaching, and delivering instruction in both online and face-to-face modalities. During her tenure at NCCU, she founded J.E.W.E.L.S., a gender-specific non-profit organization that develops the next generation of women leaders in criminal and social justice fields.
Tameka is a two-time alumna of North Carolina Central University (NCCU). She was awarded dual bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Criminal Justice and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice. She received her Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Tameka’s written work and research interests focus on student professional development, correctional managers’ leadership development, barbershops and beauty salons as community anchors, the criminalization of minority youth, and the barriers to leadership for Black women in the workplace.
Her life’s work focuses on making systemic and structural changes in the criminal justice system through leadership, advocacy, research, and teaching.
Brian Lovins
JSP President
Dr. Brian Lovins is the President for Justice System Partners (JSP). He earned his PhD in Criminology from the University of Cincinnati. He is currently President-Elect for the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA). Prior to JSP, Dr. Lovins worked for Harris County CSCD as the Assistant Director. He was tasked with developing and implementing agency wide change plans to drive increased successful completion rates. In addition, he was the Associate Director for the University of Cincinnati’s Corrections Institute—the School of Criminal Justice’s training and research department. He has developed a state-wide juvenile risk assessment (Ohio Youth Assessment System: OYAS) and adult risk assessment (Ohio Risk Assessment System: ORAS), as well as validation of a series of pretrial risk assessments. Dr. Lovins has been invited to present to over 200 agencies and routinely trains agencies in the principles of effective intervention, risk assessment, and the delivery of cognitive-behavioral interventions.
Dr. Lovins has received the Dr. Simon Dinitz Award for his work and dedication in helping correctional agencies adopt evidence-based programs and the David Dillingham Award, as well as being recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus from the University of Cincinnati. His publications include articles on risk assessment, sexual offenders, effective interventions, and cognitive-behavioral interventions.
Our Approach
JSP’s approach to the opioid epidemic differs from past approaches by recognizing individuals with lived experience as the experts on this issue and centering them in this work. The community is centered throughout the project, and local subject matter experts were hired to provide expertise and assist the JSP team in gathering and capturing the voices of the community members who are often left out of decision-making processes. JSP understands the value of infusing the voices of people with lived experience into the work to improve outcomes. Our role is to lift up and amplify their expertise. In most cases, resources are extracted from the community with little to no compensation for those providing knowledge and emotional labor. All consultants on the project are paid the federal contracting rate. In addition to hosting facilitated discussions, the JSP team also conducted a landscape assessment to see the issues described by the community firsthand and understand where resources exist.