Just Drug Courts

Preeti P. Menon is the Senior Associate Director at the Justice Programs Office. She is passionate about bringing collaboration and communication as important bases for the success of any initiative. She has extensive experience in justice system policy development and criminal justice program operations as well as project management. She leads JPO’s grant-funded projects and coordinates with project directors on tasks and deliverables. She is currently the Principal Investigator and project director of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) National Drug Court Resource Center. Ms. Menon is also the Principal Investigator for DOJ Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) Juvenile Drug Treatment Courts TTA and has over twenty years of experience providing TTA to state and local justice agencies, coordinating roundtables, workshops and forums, and providing research and analytical support in justice related initiatives. She has worked on several problem-solving courts initiatives, which includes transferring and launching the Veterans Treatment Courts newsletter, consulting on a community court mentoring project for the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), supporting a drug court training and technical assistance (TTA) project. In addition, she created the framework for JPO’s Right to Counsel National Campaign and demonstrated the importance of collaboration at all levels. Prior to joining American University, she served as a consultant with AU for BJA’s Drug Court TTA Project and, previously, at the U.S. Department of Justice for eight years as a Policy Advisor on Adjudication for the BJA and as a Social Science Program Specialist for OJJDP. Prior to joining the federal government, she worked as a Planning Specialist on contracts with the MD Dept of Juvenile Justice and the U.S. DOJ, National Institute of Justice. She has co-authored and provided writing and editing support for analytical papers on criminal justice case management and integration. In addition, while working with Federal Data Corporation as a Research Assistant, she provided research support for the supplement to the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, and the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence.