Caitlin Cavanagh

Caitlin Cavanagh is a developmental psychologist and associate professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University. She heads the Adolescent Development and the Justice System Lab at Michigan State, whose goal is to inform policy using developmentally-sound research to improve how the justice system interacts with children and families. At the lab, her research team focuses on relationships between adolescent development and contact with the juvenile justice system, how youth develop attitudes about the law and ways law and policy can better support marginalized families whose children come in contact with the juvenile justice system.

Cavanagh earned her PhD from the University of California-Irvine in 2016. Her recent scholarship has been published in Justice Quarterly, Punishment & Society, Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and other academic journals.