Olive Lu

Associate Director of Research

Olive is Associate Director of Research at the Data Collaborative for Justice. She contributes largely to shaping DCJ’s research agenda, assisting the executive director with funding and future research ideas, disseminating reports, engaging with system and community stakeholders on research findings, collaborating with fellow researchers from within and outside DCJ, as well as conducting independent research. Olive’s work at DCJ has spanned across topics including misdemeanor and low-level enforcement, criminal case processing, and jail admissions in New York and other jurisdictions across the US. Her recent work centers around the impact of recent New York State criminal justice reform laws on release decisions, lower-level enforcement practices, and criminal convictions. Olive was previously a fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice where she helped to establish the In Our Backyards Initiative to reduce mass incarceration through local, state, and federal policy change. Olive hails from Auckland, New Zealand, and holds a BA in Psychology from New York University, an MS in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Criminal Justice from the CUNY Graduate Center.