Bryant Crubaugh

Bryant Crubaugh analyzes the impact of local initiatives to reimagine community safety, enact alternatives to the criminal legal system, and increase housing availability and affordability. Dr. Crubaugh conducts research and evaluation that seeks to establish evidence of the transformative power of community responses to violence. This work has included a specific focus on the impacts of alternative first response and community violence interruption. For example, he is leading two impact evaluations of alternative first response programs, in Harris County, TX and Dayton, OH, implementing quasi-experimental designs to isolate the causal impact of diverting 911 calls to trained mediators and mental health professionals on arrest and racial disparities in arrest. 

Similarly, Dr. Crubaugh is leading the implementation of quasi-experimental designs for the evaluation of community violence intervention in Harris County, TX, and supporting the evaluation of similar approaches in Indianapolis, IN. Through the establishment of evidence of the effectiveness of credible messenger approaches that centers the lived experience of members of the community in interrupting cycles of violence, this work refines and builds external credibility of community-based responses to alleviating violence and related inequalities.

Dr. Crubaugh is also engaged in evaluating impacts of programs across the criminal legal system. He is leading the analysis of law enforcement’s use of force across over 100 law enforcement agencies as part of AIR’s larger efforts to understand the disparities in non-lethal use of force. He is currently the project director of the evaluation of Delaware’s statewide violence reduction program and a senior scientist/study advisor for the evaluation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Reentry and English as a Second Language and Literacy Evaluation. 

In addition to his work in violence prevention, Dr. Crubaugh’s research evaluates neighborhood inequalities and housing affordability. Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Crubaugh was an associate professor of sociology, leading research and teaching courses at the intersection of urban development and structural inequalities, establishing the impact of city policy on housing affordability, gentrification, and poverty concentration.