Careers at RFCUNYJob Openings

ISLG is an institute within the City University of New York. The Institute’s mission is to help achieve improvements in the financing, delivery, and measurement of critical public services by assisting current and future leaders in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector, in the U.S. and internationally, by offering research, technical assistance, and education and training. The Institute’s director, Michael Jacobson, previously served as New York City’s Probation and Correction Commissioner and president of the Vera Institute of Justice.

Project Description

ISLG is hiring a Data Scientist to process and manage large amounts of data in support of the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a $100 million initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails. To date, the Foundation has awarded grants to approximately 30 jurisdictions to implement strategies across the criminal justice system that will reduce jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities. ISLG provides data, measurement, and analytic support to these jurisdictions, using case-level administrative data that is collected from a range of criminal justice agencies in each sites. Among ISLG’s responsibilities is collecting, cleaning, validating, and managing all of this data in support of our work and the Challenge’s broader research and evaluation agenda.

The Data Scientist may have opportunities to work in a similar capacity on other projects at the Institute.

Position Description

ISLG is looking to hire a Data Scientist for the SJC team that will focus specifically on processing and managing the administrative data that is submitted by sites. The Data Scientist will report to a senior researcher and will work closely with other project staff—and in particular, will work with project staff to translate their practical data and analysis needs into programming work. Specifically, the Data Scientist will support project team members through the following activities:

• Writing programing and syntax to:
  • Import, validate, normalize, merge, restructure and clean case-level administrative data files for analysis
  • Auto-populate reports and create data feeds
  • Create dashboards (including interactive dashboards)
  • Support the creation of data visualizations
• Creating and maintaining a system for organizing and managing data files
• Working closely with SJC project team members to ensure that technical work is informed by an understanding of local criminal justice processes
• Serving as a technical consultant to sites and partners, as needed, which may include:
  • Extracting data from data warehouses and other back-end systems, as needed
  • Conducting data and systems reviews as needed
• As needed, conducting quantitative analysis of the files that are created
• Maintaining detailed documentation on all data management decisions and technical work
• Developing codebooks, file specifications, and other resource documents
• Potentially traveling to sites, as needed