WestEd's Anthony Petrosino specializes in social policy research, with an emphasis in evaluation. His extensive background and training in criminal justice help to expand the agency's work in juvenile delinquency.

Petrosino serves as Senior Research Associate for Learning Innovations at WestEd and Associate Director of Research for the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI). In the latter role, he helps conduct policy-relevant studies designed to meet research priorities in the region, using a range of methodological approaches. For example, he co-authored (with WestEd's Sarah Guckenburg and Tom Hanson) the REL-NEI report, Characteristics of Bullying, Bullying Victims, and Schools Are Associated With Increased Reporting of Bullying to School Officials?

He also is Co-Investigator (with WestEd's Tom Hanson and Jo Ann Izu) of a National Institute of Justice-funded randomized experimental evaluation of a school-based resiliency program, Tribes Learning Communities (Tribes). This experimental study will determine the short-term impact of the program on the behavior and academic progress of California's elementary school students.

Petrosino is also collaborating on three systematic review projects on school enrollment programs in developing nations (with WestEd's Claire Morgan and Trevor Fronius). He also collaborated with Sarah Guckenburg on the Campbell Collaboration review entitled, Formal System Processing: Effects on Delinquency, published in 2010, and with Sarah Guckenburg and Trevor Fronius on a review of evaluations of police-schools interventions for George Mason University, also published in 2010.

Prior to joining WestEd, Petrosino served as a research consultant for various education and other institutions. At Harvard University, he worked on a study of how evaluation research influenced decision-making about America's most popular school-based drug prevention program, D.A.R.E. For the Canadian Department of Justice, he reviewed evaluations of programs and services provided to divorced or separated parents.

In addition, Petrosino completed a report on U.S. counter-terrorism measures for the Netherlands Ministry of Justice, and a review paper on the relationship of family factors to crime for the U.K. Home Office.

He also helped develop the Campbell Collaboration (C2), an international organization that prepares, updates, and disseminates systematic reviews of research on the effects of social and educational interventions. Specifically, he helped develop the C2's first register of experimental studies (known as C2-SPECTR), its first review (on the "Scared Straight" juvenile delinquency prevention program), and one of its first substantive groups (Crime & Justice Group). He received a Distinguished Service Award from the Campbell Crime and Justice Group for his service as Founding Coordinator.

Petrosino has published approximately 60 articles. His paper in Crime and Delinquency entitled, "Well-Meaning Programs Can Have Harmful Effects! Lessons From Experiments in Scared Straight," won the Pro Humanitate Literary Award from the North American Child Welfare Resource Center.

He has co-edited four special journal volumes, and one of these, New Directions in Evaluation (with Patricia Rogers, Tim Hacsi, and WestEd's Tracy Huebner), was nominated by the Australasian Evaluation Society in 2001 as the best contribution to the evaluation literature. He serves on the Editorial Boards for Evidence & Policy and the Journal of Experimental Criminology. In 2005, he was elected "Honorary Fellow" by the Academy of Experimental Criminology.

Petrosino received a BA in justice and law from Rowan University of New Jersey (formerly Glassboro State College), an MA in criminal justice from Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, and a PhD in criminal justice from Rutgers University. He was awarded a Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Children’s Initiative in 1997 in "the evaluation of programs for children," and served as Research Fellow for the Center for Evaluation at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.