Jeanie Thies is a professor of political science and a senior research fellow in the Hammond Institute. She also coordinates the Hammond Institute's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative.  Dr. Thies began her career as a criminal psychologist and spent nearly 10 years working in corrections as a therapist and director of Missouri’s mandatory sex offender program.

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Thies has an additional 20 years of experience as a consultant and trainer for criminal and juvenile justice agencies and the courts and has consulted on national, state and local projects.  Her areas of expertise include offender risk assessment, design and evaluation of offender treatment programs, and sex offenders.

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She has presented at conferences and published articles on the topics of prison siting, sex offending, mental health and drug courts, juveniles in residential setting, use of criminology, criminal justice systems, corrections, criminal behavior, victimology, criminal justice and popular culture, program evaluation, research methods, and psychology.

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Dr. Thies received her BA in Psychology from the University of Missouri–Columbia (1983) and her MA in Psychology (1985), MA in Political Science, and PhD in Political Science (1998) from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.