Tessa Upin

Tessa Upin Senior Associate, Crime and Justice Institute Tessa Upin joined the Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice in 2013. She applies her juvenile justice expertise to statewide reform efforts as part of The Pew Charitable Trust Public Safety Performance Project (PSPP) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Smart on Juvenile Justice Initiative. She worked on teams in Hawaii and South Dakota to develop and pass comprehensive juvenile justice reform legislation. Ms. Upin currently leads implementation of legislatively-mandated evidence-based juvenile justice reforms in Hawaii, funded through OJJDP. Before joining CJI, Ms. Upin worked as a research and reform specialist at the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission. She served as a systems-improvement expert to assigned Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) sites across New Jersey. In this capacity, Ms. Upin collected, analyzed and reported juvenile justice data and advised system stakeholders on how to use the data to effectively develop, implement and track policy and practice changes to improve outcomes. She also facilitated trainings with delegations from Nebraska, Washington and Mississippi on building system-wide capacity for data collection and evaluation to guide data-driven juvenile justice policy reform. Ms. Upin was awarded the New Jersey Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Innovation for her work on statewide implementation of JDAI. Ms. Upin previously worked at United Communities of Southeast Philadelphia, providing ongoing case management to families and children referred to the Philadelphia Regional Truancy Court. Ms. Upin remains involved with Philadelphia youth and families as a volunteer panelist on one of the city’s Youth Aid Panels, a diversion program for first time juvenile offenders. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Master of Science in Criminology.