By William Harms

Associate Professor Matthew Epperson is a leading expert in studying a national trend towards reducing the time that criminals are imprisoned. The movement, called decarceration, tries to replace incarceration with other choices. It also examines approaches that respond to criminal behaviors that are more human and just. Epperson developed his interest in the incarcerated as a social worker in a jail in Michigan and has gone on to co-found a national research project on the issue. His published work looks at the role mental illness plays in arrests and imprisonment. He is Principal Investigator for the project "Advancing Intervention Science 
for Probationers with Serious Mental Illnesses." The study, involves developing and testing a new  intervention to reduce the risk of criminal behavior and improve treatment adherence among people on probation who have serious mental illnesses.

By William Harms

Assistant Professor Leyla Ismayilova studies child maltreatment in one of the world's poorest nations, Burkina Faso, in western Africa. Her work shows how family counseling can improve the lives of children, who experience emotional and physical violence and who often work away from home to help support their families. She studies how the counseling can be combined with an economic project that helps raise incomes for the very poor. Hers is among the first experimental design to test the impact of integrated psychosocial and economic-empowerment interventions on the child protection and mental health outcomes among families in very poor countries. Her work shows the combined intervention led to a reduction of hunger among children as well as lower symptoms of depression and trauma. Mothers who participated in the combined intervention showed reduced use of harsh discipline methods.