Lisa Hutchinson

Lisa Hutchinson is a principal researcher at AIR. Her primary responsibilities involve serving as project director for the National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC) and the Center for Coordinated Assistance to States (CCAS). NRRC is a Bureau of Justice Assistance funded training and technical assistance center that provides training and technical assistance, advances the knowledge around reentry in the field, facilitates peer networks and information exchange, and disseminates information regarding the Second Chance Act and reentry for juveniles and adults. CCAS is an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention-funded training and technical assistance center. She has extensive experience managing juvenile justice projects and contributing to the development and implementation of national, state, and local strategic initiatives to improve juvenile justice systems. Dr. Hutchinson has worked collaboratively with numerous states and territories on strategic planning, racial and ethnic disparities, youth involvement, state advisory group training, implementing evidence-based programs, program evaluation, and content-specific action planning.

Previously, Dr. Hutchinson was appointed by the former Governor of Arkansas to serve as the assistant director of community-based services for the Arkansas Division of Youth Services. She also spent ten years in academia serving as an associate tenured professor teaching and researching issues in the juvenile justice field. She ran the Juvenile Justice Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock focusing on conducting applied research that led to strategic improvements in the state juvenile justice system. During her tenure at Eastern Kentucky University, she taught a variety of classes in adult and juvenile corrections and was actively engaged in applied research and community organizing to improve the effectiveness of these systems. Common themes in her work include systems improvement, coalition building, innovations in effective implementation federal funding, using data drive decision-making to improve outcomes, and overcoming challenges in implementing evidence-based approaches.

Prior to her work in academia, Dr. Hutchinson spent numerous years working in various areas of the juvenile justice field, such as delinquency prevention, juvenile probation, juvenile corrections, applied research, and community led systems improvement efforts. Informed by these various practitioner experiences, she has spent the last 25 years energizing the movement for systems improvement in juvenile justice through the development of innovative tools and techniques.

She is past chair of the Arkansas Juvenile Reform Oversight Committee and has served on the Arkansas and Kentucky State Advisory Groups.