Stacy Sechrist

Stacy Sechrist is a Research Public Health Analyst within RTI’s Justice Practice Area. Dr. Sechrist joined RTI in 2022. She has dedicated most of her professional career to the study of interpersonal violence and violent crime reduction. Her work has included partnerships with law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies at the state, local, and federal levels to provide research and training and technical assistance to help jurisdictions better understand current violent crime dynamics, and then to use data to develop and operationalize strategies to address violent crime and evaluate the impact of those strategies. Dr. Sechrist brings a public health approach and intersectional lens to her work.

Since joining RTI, Dr. Sechrist is leading community assessment activities for the National Case Closed Project funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, designed to help law enforcement agencies improve case clearance rates for fatal and non-fatal shootings. She is also the project director and qualitative data lead in an expansion of the National Case Closed Project, known as Project CLEARS, which is funded by Arnold Ventures. This project will include additional research with community-based organizations and residents about how they work with local law enforcement agencies and how they participate in shooting investigations. Dr. Sechrist is also the site lead for three Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) case study sites and is contributing to dissemination efforts for the national PSN outcomes study.

Prior to joining RTI, Dr. Sechrist worked for nearly 13 years with the North Carolina Network for Safe Communities (NCNSC) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Her work with NCNSC included several grant-funded projects where she collaborated closely with community and campus partners, including law enforcement, resource providers, practitioners, and community members to provide research/evaluation and training and technical assistance support. Her projects have included implementation and evaluation of focused deterrence and other violent crime reduction efforts; assessment and capacity-building assistance to help communities better identify and provide services to marginalized populations, including LGBTQ+ and BIPOC victims/survivors of partner violence and human trafficking victims/survivors; collaboration with service provider and criminal justice partners to identify what works for successful offender reentry efforts; development and implementation of a university campus climate survey, including facilitation of a practitioner working group to develop data-driven recommendations to improve campus response to violence; and research and evaluation to understand what works to address juvenile violence.