RESEARCH STAFF

Scottie Whiteley, M.A.

Scottie Whiteley is the project director for the Faith- and Community-Based Youth Violence Prevention Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Initiative, which DSG operates for the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The project aims to increase the capacities of small faith- and community-based organizations to effectively address and prevent youth violence within a larger collaborative framework and increase the number of organizations joining these efforts.

Earlier, Ms. Whiteley was deputy project director of OJJDP’s Youth Violence Prevention (YVP) T&TA project. She provided support on all aspects of the grant, including assisting in content development for DSG’s comprehensive quarterly T&TA strategy; overseeing strategic planning technical assistance for OJJDP’s newest grantee sites; managing a pool of expert advisers; efforts related to planning the Fifth National Summit on Preventing Youth Violence; maintaining content of project databases; coordinating quarterly YVP Site Director calls; responding to all T&TA requests; and the implementation of Webinars. During her graduate studies, Ms. Whiteley interned at Vera Institute of Justice and supported its nine-part juvenile justice briefing series on Capitol Hill.

Brittney Clemons, M.S.

Brittney Clemons is a Research Analyst experienced in domestic violence prevention, substance misuse prevention, mental health awareness, education, and juvenile justice. She currently works in DSG’s Research and Evaluation Division on the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ’s) Evidence Assessment of Justice Programs and Practices, or CrimeSolutions, a database of evidence-based programs in criminal justice, juvenile justice, and crime victims. She also contributes to the Model Programs Guide for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a database of evidence-based programs focused on juvenile justice areas of concern, such as prevention, detention, and reentry. In addition to these, Ms. Clemons contributes to several other projects at DSG such as the NIJ Research and Evaluation Project on Domestic Radicalization and Violent Extremism, and the state of Connecticut’s Judicial Branch Court Support Services Division Juvenile Justice Process and Outcome Evaluation. Before working at DSG, Ms. Clemons was a Graduate Research Assistant and Instructor at Florida State University. She taught both a Gangs and Society course and a Research Methods course at the undergraduate level. She served as a Teacher Assistant for a Research Methods and Family Violence course for 3 years, receiving affirming reviews of her work. While working as a Research Assistant at the Institute for Family Violence Studies, she researched topics related to family violence, collected and cleaned data, and wrote online articles related to domestic violence prevention, mental health and substance use, and recovery and resilience. In addition to developing trauma-informed trainings and toolkits for divorced parents and co-parents, police officers, and supervised-visitation officers, she played a major role in disseminating prevention resources to the public—including to children and parents. Ms. Clemons interned at Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) Research and Data Integrity, where she cleaned Florida DJJ human trafficking data and conducted statistical analyses for the DJJ secretary, Florida legislators, and the Florida Department of Children and Families. She also constructed graphics and interactive data visualizations for public dissemination. Ms. Clemons received her M.S. in criminology from Florida State University.

Victoria Robinson–Hines

Victoria Robinson–Hines has a background in office management, administrative assistance, and research. She has served as Research Assistant for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s  (SAMHSA’s) Buprenorphine DATA (Drug Addiction Treatment Act) Waiver Management contract, for which she updated physician waivers, researched and analyzed qualitative data on the opioid epidemic, communicated with practitioners to collect qualifying documents, and assisted the project director in various data-entry tasks. She has also done consulting work with SAMHSA’s Recovery to Practice) project, assisting in data analysis, research, and data collection and organizing for the RTP library. In addition to her ongoing work supporting office staff and project managers by providing research and technical assistance for various projects, Ms. Robinson–Hines is DSG’s Office Manager.