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Caitlin Cavanagh is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Her research broadly focuses on the intersections of psychology and law, particularly how social contexts shape adolescent behavior. With training as a developmental psychologist, she is particularly interested in dynamic parent-child relationships. Her program of research seeks to produce developmentally sound findings to improve the juvenile justice system's interfaces with youth and families. Among her key research projects are the Crossroads Mothers Study and the Juvenile Risk Assessment Study. The Crossroads Mothers Study is a multi-site, longitudinal study investigating the long-term impacts of formal versus informal processing of first-time adolescent offenders, augmented by interviews with female guardians. The Juvenile Risk Assessment Study investigates the predictive validity of risk assessments in collaboration with the Ingham County Juvenile Court and Child Protective Services, focusing on drug relapse, sexual offending, and human trafficking. Another important project, the Adolescent Sleep & Social Development Study, examines how normative adolescent social development and sleep patterns are disrupted by incarceration, tracking these developments over time.
Department of Psychology