Graduate Research Assistant

Benjamin J. Mackey is a Research Associate at the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. His research centers on community corrections in the U.S. and abroad, focusing on how state and non-state actors jointly construct and/or reform the corrections process. In his scholarship, he draws upon implementation science frameworks to analyze and advance criminal legal reform efforts, as well as critical, postmodern, and sociolegal theories to understand the forms and distribution of social control in the community. His dissertation explores the role of multinational corporations in the implementation of electronic monitoring in Colombia and Chile. With experience working in reentry, he is passionate about combining research with practice and has led trainings for community corrections personnel in the U.S. and internationally.

Benjamin is co-editor (with Ioan Durnescu, James M. Byrne, and Faye S. Taxman) of the Routledge Handbook on Global Community Corrections (2024), and his work has appeared in Punishment & Society, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Aggression and Violent Behavior, and the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. He graduated from George Mason University with a B.S. and M.A. in Criminology, Law and Society in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

 
Research interests:

• Reentry
• Community supervision
• Corrections
• Qualitative methods
• Survey research

 
Projects working on:

• Developing Practice Guidelines for Supervision Agencies
• Evaluation of Stepping Up Efforts to Improve MH Services and Justice Utilization

What is so fascinating about one research project you are working on at ACE!

Working with practitioners and folks involved in the criminal legal system to develop practice guidelines for supervision agencies, I’m constantly fascinated by the areas where perspectives from the two sides align and where they diverge.

How do you think working on ACE! projects will make you a better researcher?

Hands-on work with practitioners and system-impacted folks is always valuable.  It’s very helpful to hear from people on the ground exactly how different policies and practices work (and sometimes don’t!)

If you had to give advise to an agency about evidence-based practices, what would that be.

For me, step 1 will always be to think about the big-picture implications of a practice.  Even if the evidence shows it’s effective at achieving an outcome, it’s important to consider how it actually does so—especially who it may help and who it may harm along the way.