Director, The Global Community Corrections Initiative
Country Expertise: United States
James Byrne is Professor Emeritus, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell., and an affiliated faculty member at George Mason University’s Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!). He received his undergraduate degree in Sociology (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1977), and his Masters (1980) and Doctoral degree (1983) in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University.
Professor Byrne has conducted several large-scale evaluations of institutional and community corrections programs during his career, including assessments of offender reentry programs at several sites across the United States, a nationwide review of day reporting centers, an experimental evaluation of absconder location strategies, evaluation of the National Institute of Corrections’ Institutional Culture Change Initiative, and a multi-site evaluation of the Massachusetts Intensive Probation Supervision program. Most recently, he completed a systematic, evidence-based review of the research on the effectiveness of all United States Federal Bureau of Prisons programming for the Bureau of Prisons (Nov. 2023). He is currently the project director for a NIDA and BJA-funded multi-site research project (2021-2024), Community participatory research on veterans in specialized programming examining service provision in Veterans Treatment Courts.
Professor Byrne is the author of several books, monographs, journal articles, and research reports on a range of criminal and juvenile justice policy and program evaluation issues. His edited texts include: The Social Ecology of Crime (1986), Smart Sentencing: The Emergence of Intermediate Sanctions (1994), The New Technology of Crime, Law, and Social Control (2007, 2010), The Culture of Prison Violence (2008), The Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Institutional and Community Corrections (2021), The New Technology of Financial Crime (2022),The Handbook on Technology and Crime (2023),The Routledge Handbook of Global Community Corrections (2024), and Scams, Cons, Frauds, and Deceptions: Online and In-Person Victimization Schemes ( 2024).
In 2019, Byrne was appointed to serve as a member of the Independent Review Committee responsible for advising the U.S. Attorney General on the design and implementation of the Risk Need Assessment System that is a central component of the Congressionally mandated 2018 First Step Act, a major federal prison reform initiative. He also serves as a member, Panel of Experts – Correctional Services Advisory and Accreditation Panel, Ministry of Justice, United Kingdom. He previously served as the External Inspector of Prisons, Office of the Inspector General, Queensland Correctional Services, Australia (2014), where he conducted an independent review of the prison assault problem across Queensland's prisons.
Professor Byrne is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Victims and Offenders: An International Journal of Evidence-based Research, Policy, and Practice. Dr. Byrne also serves on the editorial boards of two other journals Criminology and Public Policy, and the European Journal of Probation, and on National Advisory Committee for the journal, Federal Probation, a publication of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Professor Byrne’s contribution to the field has been recognized by the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing: in 2011, he was the recipient of both the Distinguished Scholar Award and the Marguerite Q. Warren and Ted B. Palmer Differential Intervention Award; and in November 2021, he was awarded the Division’s Lifetime Achievement Award.