Jim Parsons joined Vera in March 2003. He currently serves as both the director of the Substance Use and Mental Health Program and lead researcher in the International Indicators Group. His work on substance use and mental health has included studies measuring the overlap of mental illness and incarceration in New York City and Washington, DC; the provision of jail-to-community reentry services in New York; and a number of program evaluations, including research with Vera’s Guardianship and Adolescent Portable Therapy programs. His international work includes a 2008 project to develop and pilot a set of empirical rule of law indicators in the United States, Chile, India, and Nigeria. He is currently the principal researcher on a United Nations funded initiative to develop rule of law indicators for use in post-conflict settings. For the past five years, he has consulted on justice reform projects in China.

Prior to joining Vera, Jim worked at the Center for Research on Drugs and Health Behavior and the Institute for Criminal Policy Research in London where he conducted community studies of HIV prevalence among injecting drug users and evaluated needle exchange programs and prison reentry services. Jim has an MSc in social research methods from the University of Surrey.