CJA Research Staff

Richard R. Peterson, Ph.D.
Director, Research Department
Richard R. Peterson joined CJA as a Senior Research Analyst in 1998. He became Chair of the Research Department in 2000 and was named Director of the Research Department in 2002. He conducts research on criminal justice processing of domestic violence cases in New York City. Prior to joining CJA, he was a Program Officer at the Social Science Research Council, and directed the Center for Applied Social Science Research at New York University. He has taught Sociology courses at Columbia, Barnard, NYU and Bard College. He has published articles on women in the labor market, child care, and divorce and is the author of Women, Work and Divorce (SUNY Press, 1989). He has an A.B. in Sociology from Georgetown University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University.

Raymond P. Caligiure
Graphics and Production Specialist
Raymond Caligiure joined CJA as a Research Assistant in 1987. He was promoted to Senior Research Assistant in 1990 and to Graphics and Production Specialist in 2000. He prepares all the tables and graphs for the Annual Report series and the annual Agency report on juvenile offenders prosecuted in the adult court. Most recently, he re-designed the Research portion of the CJA website and converted all the recent CJA Research Reports for online viewing with Adobe Acrobat Reader. He is responsible for archiving Research project files. He provides technical assistance as a member of the Publications Unit. He has a B.A. in English with a minor in Journalism from the State University of New York at Albany.

Marian J. Gewirtz
Senior Research Analyst
Marian Gewirtz has been a member of the Research Department since 1976. She served as Research Director from 1981 to 1983 and was responsible for early CJA research evaluating Agency operations, including studies of court-date notification efforts and patterns of failure to appear. She directed the Assigned Counsel Eligibility Screening Project. She currently prepares the Agency report on juvenile offenders prosecuted in the adult court and the data for the New York City sites for the State Court Processing Statistics Program, a Bureau of Justice Statistics project administered by the Pretrial Services Resource Center. She earned a B.A. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.A. in Sociology from Indiana University.

Steve Mardenfeld
Research Assistant
Steve Mardenfeld joined CJA as a Research Assistant in 2006. He was promoted to Senior Research Assistant in 2007. Steve assists in the preparation and analysis of datasets and in editing reports. He received a B.A. in Sociology from Ithaca College and has previously worked for Kendle International as a Project Assistant.

Mary T. Phillips, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, Research Department
Mary Phillips joined CJA as a Research Analyst in 1992. She was promoted to Senior Research Analyst in 1993 and to Deputy Director of the Research Department in 2006. Her current research focuses on factors influencing judicial decisions regarding release and the setting of bail for defendants at arraignment in the lower courts in New York City . She is also editor of CJA's Research Brief series and head of the Department's Publications Unit. Prior to joining CJA, she was Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. John's University on Staten Island . Outside the field of criminal justice, she has published articles on the sociology of animal research and is co-author of Animal Research and Ethical Conflict (Springer-Verlag, 1989). She has a B.A. in Sociology from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University.

Elyse J. Revere
Research Analyst
Elyse J. Revere joined CJA in 1998 as a court representative for the Centralized Court Screening Service. Currently, she is a Research Analyst conducting research on juvenile offenders and an alternative-to-jail program in New York City. Other topics she has been involved in researching at CJA include alternative-to-incarceration programs, judicial decision making, and gun courts. Prior to joining CJA, she worked with the Essex County, NJ drug court as a researcher. She has a B.A. in Sociology and Law and Society from Purdue University and an M.A. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University.

Qudsia Siddiqi, Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Qudsia Siddiqi joined CJA in 1989. Her research focuses on evaluating CJA's current release-on-recognizance recommendation scheme and developing alternative risk-classification schemes for defendants arrested in New York City and held for arraignment in the lower court. She has also conducted a study on pretrial recidivism in New York City. Prior to joining CJA, she worked as an assistant project director at National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. where she participated in two studies sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. One study focused on the evaluation of clinical research on AIDS prevention for HIV drug users, and another examined cocaine abuse among methadone patients. In addition to her work at CJA, she is the co-author of several articles on changes in cocaine use and help-seeking among methadone patients. She has an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Punjab, Pakistan and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the City University of New York.

Freda F. Solomon, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Freda F. Solomon joined CJA in 1988 as a Senior Research Analyst, and then served as the Deputy Research Director from 1989-2000, before being promoted to Senior Research Fellow. At CJA she has conducted a number of studies on the court impact of changes in criminal justice policies in New York City. Among these studies have been research relating to drug enforcement initiatives, and more recently, to changes in the characteristics, case processing and Criminal Court outcomes of defendants charged with quality-of-life offenses. She also has written about specialized jurisdiction criminal courts and women offenders, in both historical and contemporary contexts. A graduate of Clark University, she received an M.A. in Government from the American University College of Public Affairs, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University.

Annie Su
Administrative Associate
Annie Su joined CJA's Research department as an Administrative Associate in 2006. Annie has a B.A. in Management from Pace University, and has previously worked at the National Academy Foundation as an office coordinator. Annie provides administrative support to all members of the department as well as technical and administrative support for the work of the Publications Unit, including the Research Brief series.