Board & Staff

Colleen Eren, PhD, is an associate professor and director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program at William Paterson University of New Jersey, and has lectured at Hofstra University, Queens College, and Hunter College.  Prior to her entry full-time into academia, she was involved in criminal justice activism for over 10 years. She served as Director of Organizing at New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, where she helped guide a successful statewide campaign to keep capital punishment out of New York. She also was a steering committee member of Amnesty International's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Dr. Eren is a respected scholar and member of the Criminal Justice Research Alliance, a partnership of leading authorities from the nation's two leading criminal justice associations. A Stanford University Press author, she has published scholarly research on a variety of criminal justice issues including capital punishment, white-collar crime, criminal justice education, crime and media, the sociology of law, and the criminal justice reform movement. She has also been published on the subject of compassionate release in the New York Times.