Jeffrey Sedgwick, former director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, has been named the new executive director of the Justice Research and Statistics Association. JRSA is the national nonprofit organization of state Statistical Analysis Center directors and other researchers and practitioners throughout government, academia, and the justice community who are dedicated to the use of research and analysis to make informed policy and program decisions. Sedgwick will replace Joan Weiss, who is retiring next month after serving for 24 years.
Sedgwick heads the National Research Council’s Panel on Modernizing the Nation’s Crime Statistics and is co-founder and managing partner of Keswick Advisors, a statistical analysis and policy evaluation consulting firm in Richmond, Va. He assumed the BJS directorship in 2006, and in 2008 was named acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs in addition to the BJS directorship. He is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he began working in 1978, specializing in aspects of American government including public finance, criminal justice policy, and the role of the American presidency. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Kenyon College, a master’s degree in public administration and public policy from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in government and public affairs, also from UVA.