Erica Magaña is a Senior Researcher for the Research and Action Center at Impact Justice. She has experience conducting qualitative and quantitative research on several criminal justice-related topics. Before joining Impact Justice, she worked on various state and locally-funded program evaluation initiatives, such as evaluating Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA, and Domestic Violence Moral Reconation Therapy (DVMRT) in Washington State. To that end, she has experience collaborating with diverse program stakeholders and working with system-impacted individuals as part of these evaluation efforts. She has also published impactful research findings in Criminal Justice Policy Review and Police Quarterly.
Erica holds a bachelor’s in cognitive science from the University of California, Merced, and a master’s in criminology and criminal justice from California State University, Long Beach. She is also currently a Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University. She has focused her research endeavors on studying sexual violence, particularly female-perpetrated sexual violence, to understand better the full scope of sexual offending and sexual violence prevention.