Dr. Colleen Berryessa is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Her research, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, considers how psychological processes, perceptions, attitudes, and social contexts affect the criminal justice system, particularly related to courts, sentencing, and punitive approaches. She primarily examines these issues, using both psychological and socio-legal lenses, in relation to two areas: 1) how these phenomena affect the discretion of criminal justice actors in their punitive responses to offending and decision-making in courts; and 2) how these phenomena affect public views and consideration of courts, sentencing systems, and punitive policies and practices. Dr. Berryessa received her Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Before Penn, she graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Government and Mind, Brain, and Behavior, and served as a CIRGE research fellow at Stanford University.