Tirza Ben Ari
Doctoral Student, Psychology & Law
Tirza Ben Ari is a doctoral student at The Graduate Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her passion for improving the justice system and work as a case analyst/trial preparation assistant at the Queens District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) during her post-MA OPT has led her to her Ph.D. program, researching topics such as false confessions and police interrogation techniques, plea bargains, and psychology-related misconceptions within the justice system.
Tirza aims to contribute meaningfully to promoting conviction integrity as a scholar and an advocate for justice reform.
Agnieszka Nogalska
Forensics Psychology Master’s Student
Agnieszka Nogalska is a Forensic Psychology Master’s student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her research aims to examine risk assessment through the lens of intervention and rehabilitation. At John Jay, she completed a non-clinical externship at the Brain Health Lab, worked as a teaching assistant, and volunteered for the Restorative Justice Project. Agnieszka successfully defended her thesis in December of 2023, which examined the psychometric properties of a widely used risk assessment measure for recidivism.
Agnieszka is pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology and a career as a forensic psychologist.
Sydney Baker
Doctoral Candidate, Clinical Psychology
Sydney Baker is a fifth-year Clinical Psychology doctoral candidate at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her research aims to understand how juvenile justice system procedures, such as interrogation and plea bargaining, can be improved to accurately reflect adolescent development. Sydney works in the Youth Law & Psychology Lab at John Jay, where she conducts translational research that has direct implications for public policy reform.
Phoebe Kane
Forensics Psychology Master’s Student
Phoebe is a Forensic Psychology Master’s student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and will receive their degree in Spring 2023. Phoebe’s thesis project is an archival exploration of arrays used in previous eyewitness research studies to evaluate lineup bias in laboratory experiments. As a Graduate Research Assistant, Phoebe’s main studies of focus explore plea bargaining and confessions and lineup fairness within eyewitness identification research.