Sheena Yoon

I am a Justice Evaluation and Analysis Researcher at the Utah Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice under the Governor's Office. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Utah, where my dissertation developed the spatial capabilities framework to understand why correctional supervision concentrates in certain communities and what local conditions drive that concentration.

My research sits at the intersection of political economy, spatial analysis, public economics, and criminal justice. I specialize in Bayesian spatial methods to identify how community-level conditions shape justice system outcomes and to determine which communities need what investments and why. I am currently extending this work into the fiscal geography of confinement and risk, recidivism studies for youth and adults, and the development of place-based policy tools that help policymakers and system stakeholders target interventions to the communities that need them most.

Previously, I was a Graduate Research Assistant at the National Institute of Justice (DOJ), a Research Fellow at the Economic Evaluation Unit, a Junior Economist at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, and an Information Designer at The World Bank. I received my MA in Economics from American University with a concentration in feminist economics.