麻豆传媒

Professor Melissa L. Breger has been teaching at the law school level for 20+ years, first at The University of Michigan Law School and then at Albany Law School since 2002. Prior to teaching, Professor Breger dedicated her career to children, women and families, with her formative years practicing in New York City in a number of capacities.

She is the recipient of several teaching and service awards, both on a local level and on a national level, including the Shanara C. Gilbert Award in recognition of her excellence in teaching and contributions to the advancement of social justice from the American Association of Law Schools; the L. Hart Wright Excellence in Law Teaching Award from the University of Michigan Law School; and the 2016 Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2018 Faculty Award for Excellence in Service, and 2019 Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship from Albany Law School. Professor Breger also received the Albany County Family Court Children鈥檚 Center Award 鈥渋n recognition of her outstanding and tireless work assisting children and families in need and for her dedication to ensure that law students obtain the skills necessary to provide high quality and compassionate legal services to court litigants鈥� in May 2008.

Professor Breger teaches a variety of courses at Albany Law School, including Evidence, Family Law, Criminal Procedure: Investigation (4th, 5th, 6th A), Gender & the Law, Children, Juveniles & the Law (hybrid online), Domestic Violence Seminar, and Children & the Law. She was the Director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic from 2002 to 2010.

Professor Breger is the co-author of NEW YORK LAW OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, a two-volume treatise published by Reuters-Thomson-West, as well as the author of numerous law review articles regarding issues of family law, gender, and justice. Her scholarly interests include the rights of children and families, gender and racial equality, procedural justice in the courtroom, juvenile justice, the increasing epidemic of child sexual trafficking, implicit bias, law and culture, family violence, and the intersections between psychology and the law.

Jennifer Tilton is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work combines urban anthropology, geography, history and public policy to understand childhood, space and the criminal justice system.

Adam Fine researches young people's perception of law enforcement and how that differs across political affiliation and race.

Fine is also studying the effectiveness of a program that brings police officers into schools to work on community-service projects and how probation affects youth offending, employment education, and attitudes. 

He's assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Elizabeth Cauffman is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Science in the School of Social Ecology and holds courtesy appointments in the School of Education and the School of Law. Dr. Cauffman received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Temple University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University. At the broadest level, Dr. Cauffman鈥檚 research addresses the intersect between adolescent development and juvenile justice. She has published over 100 articles, chapters, and books on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-making, parent-adolescent relationships, and juvenile justice. Findings from Dr. Cauffman鈥檚 research were incorporated into the American Psychological Association鈥檚 amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons, which abolished the juvenile death penalty, and in both Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama, which placed limits on the use of life without parole as a sentence for juveniles. As part of her larger efforts to help research inform practice and policy, she served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation鈥檚 Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice as well as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine鈥檚 Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications. Dr. Cauffman currently directs the Center for Psychology & Law (http://psychlaw.soceco.uci.edu/) as well as the Masters in Legal & Forensic Psychology program (https://mlfp.soceco.uci.edu/) at UCI. To learn more about her research, please visit her Development, Disorder, and Delinquency lab website.

Leslie Leve is best known for her research on child and adolescent development, gene-environment interplay, and interventions for underserved children, families, and communities. This includes preventive intervention studies with youth in foster care or juvenile justice system, adoption studies that examine the interplay between biological and social influences on development, and COVID-19 testing outreach programs for Latinx communities. 

She co-directs a Center on parenting in the context of opioid use. Her work also focuses on outcomes for girls and women. To date, she has published more than 190 scientific articles and 20 book chapters. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Education.

Sarah Mountz鈥� research focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ youth in child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and among homeless youth populations. Her most recent research project, From Our Perspectives, used a community based participatory research (CBPR) framework to look at the experiences of LGBTQ former foster youth in Los Angeles County through qualitative interviewing and photovoice methods. Participants鈥� photos were featured in a traveling art installation that participants helped curate, as well as on an interactive website, and in a mini-documentary series.

Mountz' previous research used life history interviewing to explore the experiences of queer, transgender and gender expansive young people in girls鈥� juvenile justice facilities in New York State with attention to how the intersection of gender identity and sexual orientation, age, race and ethnicity informed their trajectories into and out of the juvenile justice system. She is particularly interested in LGBTQ and other youth activism and organizing.

Dr. Tusty ten Bensel is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at UA Little Rock. She is also the Director of the Justice Research Policy Center at UA Little Rock. She received her B.A and M.A in Criminal Justice from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Dr. ten Bensel is a premier scholar specializing in violence and victimology. Her research stems from an interest in understanding the broader social, historical, and political contexts of criminal behavior and desistance, focusing specifically on sexual violence, victimization, neighborhoods and crime/recidivism, and hate crimes against special populations.
She has published more than 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Criminology, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Criminal Justice Policy Review. She has completed one book and secured multiple grants/contracts. Based on her research on collective sexual violence in warring countries, she was invited to present her work at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2014, where she discussed the collectivization process of sexual violence in Bosnia and Sierra Leone. In 2019, Dr. ten Bensel received the Faculty Excellence Award in Research and Creative Endeavors by the College of Social Science and Communication for her research achievements.