Team

Jacob Kaplan, Founder

Dr. Jacob Kaplan founded 1930 Research LLC in 2024 to provide expert guidance in helping clients transform complex crime data into actionable information to help them achieve measurable goals. With a Ph.D. and M.S. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, Jacob brings knowledge and hands-on experience to every project. He served on the FBI’s UCR Subcommittee, where he advised on national crime data standards. Jacob holds a Public Trust from the United States government.

Jacob is the author of A Criminologist’s Guide to R: Crime by the Numbers (CRC Press, 2022), the developer of six R packages, including fastDummies(over 2.3 million downloads) and asciiSetupReader (53,000 downloads). With ten years of experience in R, he has also led numerous workshops on data cleaning, analysis, and visualization.

Jacob’s research focuses on policing, discrimination, and the proper use of crime data. Specifically, he uses complex datasets to answer causal questions that drive evidence-based policy. Jacob has published over a dozen peer-reviewed manuscripts in numerous academic journals. Drawing from extensive fieldwork with law enforcement and civil rights attorneys, Jacob brings a unique perspective to crime data analysis, ensuring his insights reflect the practical realities of the criminal justice system.

Kristina Block, Director of Research

Dr. Kristina Block is the Director of Research at 1930 Research LLC and a current Assistant Professor of Law and Justice Studies at Rowan University, where she specializes in data-driven analysis of justice and health systems. She holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University and an M.S. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work bridges academic research with real-world relevance, translating complex data into results that inform policy, shape public understanding, and highlight pathways for improvement among individuals in the criminal justice system.

Kristina’s work covers a wide range of topics, including head injuries and behavioral health among justice-involved populations, sports and crime relationships, patterns in familial offending, and system-level disparities within the criminal justice system. She frequently works with large-scale longitudinal datasets and applies various quantitative methods to answer diverse and policy-relevant research questions. Kristina’s work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and cited by media outlets, including The New York Times and Scripps National News.