Emily Salisbury is an associate professor in the College of Social Work and director of the Utah Criminal Justice Center at the University of Utah. She is committed to producing research evidence that informs correctional policy and practice at the intersection of criminology, forensic social work/psychology and gender studies. Salisbury’s scholarship focuses on improving existing knowledge about offending risk, need and strength assessment, particularly among justice-involved women; correctional rehabilitation policies and practices; and gendered pathways to crime. She is considered a leading global scholar on evidence-based correctional practices with justice-involved women.

Salisbury is the co-creator and research director of the Women’s Risk Needs Assessment (WRNA), the only peer-reviewed, validated risk and strengths instrument in the public domain. WRNA is used to measure women’s specific criminogenic needs as well as their strengths, aiding development of comprehensive case plans to keep women from cycling in and out of the criminal justice system.

The WRNA is used by more than 100 international and U.S. jurisdictions, positioning the Utah Criminal Justice Center as the global research, training and technical assistance provider for the tool. The United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime endorsed the WRNA as a recommended instrument to adhere to the U.N.’s “Bangkok Rules” for the humane treatment of incarcerated women.

Salisbury served as an expert witness for civil rights commissions in the U.S. and Canada. She actively provides technical assistance to the U.S. Department of Justice and has participated in numerous media interviews; her TEDx talk on women’s prisons has over 15,000 views. Salisbury is the co-author of “Correctional Counseling and Rehabilitation” and is the recipient of the Marguerite Q. Warren and Ted B. Palmer Differential Intervention Award.