Team
Jacob Kaplan, Founder
Dr. Jacob Kaplan founded 1930 Research LLC in 2024. He is a Professional Specialist at Princeton University with a Ph.D. and M.S. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. He served on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Subcommittee, where he advised on national crime data standards, and holds a federal Public Trust designation.
Jacob is the author of A Criminologist’s Guide to R: Crime by the Numbers (CRC Press, 2022), a widely adopted textbook in university criminology and criminal justice programs, and Decoding FBI Crime Data, a guide to understanding and using FBI crime data. He has spent over 10 years building and maintaining public safety datasets, with data products downloaded 15,000+ times and cited 250+ times in academic research. He has published over 15 peer-reviewed articles and led numerous workshops on R programming and crime data for researchers, practitioners, and students.
Jacob is co-PI on a $263,000 grant from Arnold Ventures with Dr. Kristina Block and Dr. Jay Szkola (Rowan University) focused on improving the reliability and usability of FBI crime data. His research focuses on policing, discrimination, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Drawing from extensive fieldwork including dozens of ride-alongs, jail and prison visits, court watching, and meetings with law enforcement officials to discuss data collection practices, as well as work with civil rights attorneys, he brings a practical perspective to every project that few data consultants can match.
Kristina Block, Director of Research
Dr. Kristina Block is the Director of Research at 1930 Research LLC and an Assistant Professor of Law and Justice Studies at Rowan University. She holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University and an M.S. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kristina’s research 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 quantitative methods to answer policy-relevant research questions. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and cited by media outlets including The New York Times and Scripps National News.
She is co-PI on a $263,000 grant from Arnold Ventures with Dr. Jacob Kaplan and Dr. Jay Szkola (Rowan University) focused on improving the reliability and usability of FBI crime data. She brings practical fieldwork experience including extensive ride-alongs with the Maine State Police.
For a formal summary of our capabilities and past performance, download our Capability Statement.
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