Who we are is defined by the story we tell about ourselves, where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going.
Understanding this story in the context of our dispositional traits, our shifting goals and motivations, and the larger narratives of our social world and group identities is a momentous task but gives the fullest picture of the individual.
About Me
I have sought to examine predominantly how our view of ourselves in relation to authorities determines how we situationally define and justify power and its use; the way we relate to nature and ecology shapes our exercise of power over the natural world; we embed our conceptions of power and power relations into the built structures that house and represent authority and systems of justice; identities are selected by power holders for marginalization and the processes used to beget and maintain inequality; and marginalized identities are formed in the context of disempowerment. I have applied my work in these areas across fields such as criminal justice, public administration, conservation and environmental psychology, architectural and environmental psychology and sociology, law and society, etcetera.
+ My professional appointments
I am an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. In addition to my academic scholarship, a significant portion of my professional research experience has been in the policy and evaluation space.
In 2020, I became the first and current Director of Research and Data for the Kings County District Attorney’s Officewhere I served until early 2022. In this capacity, I analyzed data at the request of policymakers to support decision making, provided counsel based on the current state of criminal justice research, lead efforts to make prosecutorial data public, and oversaw studies conducted with external research partners. During this time, I also served as an adjunct assistant professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
From 2017 to 2020, I served as a senior research manager for New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where I was the lead researcher for the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety. Among other projects, I managed for MOCJ: the evaluation of MAP by the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; the Data Collaborative for Justice (formerly the Misdemeanor Justice Project), also at John Jay, and its evaluation of New York’s Criminal Justice Reform Act; the Justice Collaboratory at Yale University’sSchool of Law and its Procedural Justice Study; and the Center for Court Innovation and its 100 Centre Street study. I also advised the Office on initiatives and research involving public perceptions on a range of topics, served on the Justice Implementation Task Force’s Design Working Group to rethink correctional design, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Interagency Committee on Active Design Guidelines and supported work on race equity and supervised release. I was a central manager in conceptualizing and planning the Office’s major public-government relations work, in collaboration with the REC, University of Chicago’s NORC, the SAFE Lab at Columbia University, and Crime Lab NYC.
Before then, I was an evaluation researcher for the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. There I worked primarily on the REC’s evaluation of New York City’s Crisis Management System, leading its process evaluation of Cure Violence programming in the city. I have previously worked as a fellow at Vera Institute of Justice and as research assistant at the Center for Court Innovation, the Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies and the Urban Resource Center.
+ As a practitioner
I served as a police officer for the City of Charleston’s Police Department and a firefighter/public safety office for the City of Cayce’s Public Safety Department.
Throughout my schooling, I gained legal and practitioner training at the Turner Environmental Law Clinic, Earthjustice, Region 4 of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Home Office of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and the Stephen T. Mather Training Center for the National Park Service.
+ My education and qualifications
I hold a PhD in criminal justice from the City University of New York Graduate Center/John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a JD from Emory University’s School of Law, and a B.S. in environmental science from Tuskegee University, with a concentration in natural resource management. Before completing my PhD at John Jay, I was a master’s student in criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. I have been admitted to the legal bars of Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina. I have also taken and passed the Uniform Bar Examination and New York State Bar Examination. I completed the police academy at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy and the firefighter academy training by the South Carolina Fire Academy.
+ Where I come from
I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Michael A. Hill, Sr., and Beverly Blount-Hill, the middle of five siblings. I am a member of the Iota Phi Theta fraternity. I attended Evergreen Elementary School, Maxson Middle School, both in Plainfield, New Jersey, and Meadowdale High School in Dayton, Ohio. I graduated third in my class and received an International Baccalaureate diploma after completing my school’s IB program. I am a proud Black man, a person of deep faith, queer, academic, and committed to a mission of social and ecological justice, universal safety and security, and equal and unlimited opportunity for all of us – always borne of an ethic of love and of duty to one another. At present, I live in Manhattan, New York, with my loving partner, Satish, and our healthy and growing plant, Bambu.