About Us

• Academic Advisory Board List

Stephen Handelman, Director
shandelman@jjay.cuny.edu
646.557.4563

Stephen Handelman was appointed Director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in May 2007. An internationally known author and investigative journalist whose award-winning work has intersected the worlds of journalism, higher education, international security, justice and human rights, he is an expert on post-Soviet crime and corruption, and a veteran foreign correspondent who has reported from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia. ..Full Bio

Cara Tabachnick, Associate Director
ctabachnick@jjay.cuny.edu
212.484.1175

Cara Tabachnick was appointed Associate Director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice in March, 2008. As a police and crime reporter, she has freelanced for Newsday in New York City and Long Island, and has written for Newsweek, Scientific American online, the New York Post, UPI, and, AM New York, among others. ..Full Bio

Daonese Johnson-Colón, Project Administrator
Djohnson-colon@jjay.cuny.edu
646.557.4690

Daonese Johnson-Colón serves as the project administrator for the Center's various activities including the Pew journalism-education project in sentencing and penal reform and the H.F. Guggenheim conference. Currently pursuing a Masters degree in Legal Studies at Kaplan University, she has over eight years of experience in managing and administering complex projects. Ms. Johnson-Colón is a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society, the Alpha Beta Kappa Honor Society, and a recipient of the NAACP Minority Achievement Recognition Award. She holds a bachelor's degree in paralegal studies.

Joe Domanick, Senior Fellow
Joe Domanick, an award-winning investigative journalist and author, was named a Senior Fellow of the CMCJ in September, 2007. He also serves as Senior Fellow for Criminal Justice of the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. ..Full Bio

Ted Gest, Senior Fellow
Ted Gest, president of Criminal Justice Journalists, the nation’s only organization of working journalists covering criminal justice, has been a senior fellow and founding partner of the Center for Crime, Media and Justice since 2006. ..Full Bio

James P. Lynch, Senior Academic Advisor
James P. Lynch is a Distinguished Professor at John Jay College in New York.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Sociology and joined the Bureau of Social Science Research in 1980 where he was the manager of the National Crime Survey Redesign. ..Full Bio

Our Partners & Funders
The Center collaborates with some of the leading journalistic and academic organizations around the U.S. Its principle partners are: Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ), the only U.S. association for crime and justice reporters; the Institute for Justice and Journalism (IJJ) at USC Annenberg School for Communication; the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York and New York Community Media Alliance.

We have developed as well working partnerships with related media and other organizations, such as the Society to Protect Journalists, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists. Funding currently comes from the Open Society Institute in the U.S. and the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation.