Diana Rodriguez

Diana Rodriguez is currently a third-year doctoral student and Teaching Assistant at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Prior to, she completed her undergraduate and master’s degree in criminal justice at the University of Houston – Downtown (UHD) in 2014 and 2019, respectively. While at UHD, Diana was a member of Alpha Phi Sigma (APS) and received a Criminal Justice Service Excellence Award for her work as the vice president of APS in 2019. Diana focused her studies in both programs on understanding the relationship between youth adversity and justice involvement. In the Spring of 2022, Diana joined Lone Star College Systems as an adjunct professor, teaching undergraduate courses in court systems and criminological theory. She has worked with high-risk youth in a variety of positions since 2012, including five years as a Harris County juvenile probation officer. During her time at HCJPD she worked with justice involved youth through various specialized programs, such as the mental health unit, intense supervision unit, and the mental health specialty juvenile Court. She consistently advocated for non-punitive responses to delinquency and has committed her research focus to juvenile justice reform through the lens of restorative justice (RJ) practices. Diana has developed curriculums and implemented pilot programs founded on principles of RJ, presenting preliminary findings at The American Society of Criminology conference in Atlanta in the fall of 2022. Her first publication as co-author was accepted by The International Journal of Restorative Justice in the Spring of 2023[1] and she is currently collaborating with Rutgers University in New Jersey and over 40 researchers nationwide to complete a scoping review of RJ practices and the impact on resiliency in youth during reentry. 

 

[1] Jeremy Olson, Nadine M. Connell, Nina Barbieri and Diana Rodriguez; “Assessing the restorativeness of American school discipline programmes”