Willing to accept Primary and Secondary students for Fall 2025
jkatzman@jjay.cuny.edu
Jacqueline Katzman is a tenure-track assistant professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Katzman’s research focuses on the causes of racial disparities in the legal system, with a specific focus on how investigatory decision making produces these disparities. Using multiple methodological approaches (e.g., meta-analysis, Bayesian modeling, in-person and online behavioral experiments), she has advanced theory on memory errors like the own-race bias, social-cognitive factors like phenotypic bias, and social influence factors like policing. Her most recent findings suggest that racial disparities in misidentifications may not be the result of memory errors on the part of the eyewitness, but rather the result of systemic racism in policing procedures. Dr. Katzman’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Psychology-Law Society, the American Academy of Forensic Psychology, and CUNY.
Dr. Katzman has received several awards for her research, including the American Psychology-Law Society Outstanding Student Presentation Award (X3), and the European Association of Psychology and Law Student Presentation Award. Most recently, she was invited by the Director of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to present her work at its National Research Conference. She received her PhD from CUNY’s Graduate Center with dual specializations in Psychology & Law and Basic & Applied Social Psychology. She received her BA from Cornell University.
Current Research Interests
- What factors influence an officer’s decision to subject a suspect to an identification procedure?
- What factors influence an officer’s decision to subject a suspect to an interrogation?
- Are judges sensitive to variations in pre-identification evidence of guilt?
- Does weak pre-identification evidence of guilt exacerbate officers’ tendencies to construct suspect biased lineups?
- Does lineup constructor race contribute to the lower diagnosticity of suspect identifications from Black target lineups?
Recent Publications
Katzman, J., Welch, E., & Kovera, M.B. (invited for revision). In-court identifications affect juror decisions despite being unreliable.
Jones, J., Katzman, J., Close, M., Evelo, A., & Kovera, M.B. (under review). Suspect-filler phenotypic match but not phenotypic bias influences eyewitness identification accuracy.
Katzman, J. (in press). Applying social psychology to law. In R. Baumeister and B. Bushman (Eds), Social psychology and human nature (6th edition). Wadsworth.
Katzman, J., & Kovera, M. B. (in press). Decisions involved in eyewitness identifications. In M. K. Miller, L. A. Yelderman, M. T. Huss, & J. A. Cantone (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of the psychology of legal decision-making. Cambridge University Press.
Katzman, J. & Kovera, M.B. (2023). Potential causes of racial disparities in wrongful convictions based on mistaken identifications: Own-race bias and differences in evidence-based suspicion. Law and Human Behavior, 47(1), 23–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000503
Kovera, M.B., & Katzman, J. (2023). Diversifying the bench: A commentary on Berryessa, Dror, and McCormack (2022. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 28(12), 208–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12238
Katzman, J., Fessinger, M., Bornstein, B., & McWilliams, K. (2022). Waiving goodbye to youth: Jurors’ perceptions of juveniles transferred to adult courts. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 40(6), 835–858. https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2601
Kovera, M. B., Katzman, J., Jones, J. M., & Fessinger, M. B. (2022). Science-based recommendations for collecting eyewitness evidence. Court Review, 58(3), 130–140.
Katzman, J. & Kovera, M.B. (2022). Evidence strength (insufficiently) affects police officers’ decisions to place a suspect in a lineup. Law and Human Behavior, 46(1), 30–44.
https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000476
McCoy, C., & Katzman, J. (2021). Raising the standard of evidence for initiating an identification procedure. UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review, 5(1), 129–150. https://doi.org/10.5070/CJ85154810
Kovera, M.B., Katzman, J. “Lineups.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Psychology. Ed. Dana S. Dunn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, https://doi.org/OBO/9780199828340-0275.
Bhatt, S., Katzman, J. A., Duensing, K., Martinez, D., & Swift, R. (2017). New Mexico Naloxone Legislation: Targeting those most in need. Journal of Drug Abuse, 03(04). https://doi.org/10.21767/2471-853x.100067.
