Hi! I'm Ari (he/him/his). I work as a data scientist at Orijin, a public benefit corporation offering fee-free tablets to help incarcerated students enter living-wage careers. In 2021, I completed a Master's Degree at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. Previously, I worked in police oversight at the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD, and as a researcher at Abt Associates, where I helped build a dataset of state prison populations across the United States. I’ve written about jail reform in New York City, prosecutorial decision making in Philadelphia, and produced data analyses for the New York City Department of Investigation's report on the NYPD's response to the George Floyd Protests.
Outside of work, I'm learning to woodwork and recently made a game for my friends about whether names are human names or dog names (check it out!).If you’re interested in my work, please feel free to reach out.
Orijin
2021–Present
Orijin (formerly known as APDS) develops educational software, job training software, and health resources for incarcerated learners. The software, loaded on tablets, is offered fee-free to students. In my role as analytics manager, I work with our tech, product and development staff to analyze student metrics, and identify areas for platform growth.
New Jersey Use of Force Dashboard
As a personal project, I developed a data dashboard based on publicly available data published by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. The dashboard demonstrates patterns in New Jersey police officers’ use of force, and is in active development. The dashboard can be viewed here* and I’m always looking for ways to improve the dashboard, or to dig in to issues in the data. If you have any questions about the data, please let me know!
*This project is temporarily out of order — a new version is coming soon!
Inspector General for the New York City Police Department
2019–2021
The Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (OIG-NYPD) investigates systemic issues in the New York City Police Department, and releases public recommendations for policy changes to improve the Department’s performance and transparency.
In my role, I analyzed data from NYPD and other city agencies to establish fact patterns in investigations. I also conducted policy reviews of other jurisdictions to establish best practices, develop new investigations, and presented trainings and brown bags on special topics for our office. My work was featured in the Department of Investigation’s report on NYPD’s response to the George Floyd Protests.
New York University Center for Urban Science and Progress
2020–2021
I received my Master’s degree in Applied Urban Informatics at the Center for Urban Science and Progress. The program focused on applying advanced data analytics to problems in cities to identify information that can be used by policy makers to make better decisions.
My work in the program focused largely on criminal justice. I completed substantial projects on digital infrastructure in New York City jails, bail outcomes in Philadelphia during the Covid-19 pandemic, and patterns in complaints of misconduct against NYPD officers. My coursework included time series analysis, dimensionality reduction techniques, natural language processing, bayesian modeling, and network analysis.
Abt Associates
2016 – 2019
At Abt Associates, I worked on a Bureau of Justice Statistics project to create a dataset of state prison populations across the United States. I researched how far people in prison lived from their homes while incarcerated, prison gerrymandering, and federal prosecutors’ response to marijuana legalization.