Dr. Rachel Boba Santos - The Criminal Analyst Professor

Dr. Rachel Boba Santos is a professor of criminal justice and co-director of the Center for Police Practice, Policy and Research at Radford University. From the beginning, Dr. Santos found crime analysis to be an exciting career. She started on that path in the early 1990s while working on her graduate degree at Arizona State University. Her hard work and dedication led her to be one of the most recognized names in the field of crime analysis. And her philosophy of doing your best work attracted the attention of David Weisburd, a well-known researcher of hot spot policing, who invited her to join him in his research. From 2003 to 2016, Dr. Santos taught at Florida Atlantic University, where she conducted her own research and wrote her first book. Together with her husband, Dr. Roberto Santos,  she developed the Stratified Policing Model now used by many agencies across the country. This organizational model is used by police agencies to systemize proactive crime reduction strategies. Some other areas of research include police/researcher partnerships, police/community collaboration, hot spot and problem-oriented policing, predictive policing, environmental criminology, crime and place, police/crime data and technology, experimental research methodology, and program evaluation. She has recently co-authored the book, Stratified Policing: An Organizational Model for Proactive Crime Reduction and Accountability. You may say Dr. Santos was in the right place at the right time when she started her career in crime analysis. For those who work with her, it is obvious her work ethics and dedication had more to do with her success than luck. She also has an affinity for data, statistics, and research. Dr. Santos’ has made it her practice to do the best she could in the job she had at the time. That kind of work ethic helped Dr. Santos positioned herself as one of the most recognizable people in crime analysis. In this episode of The Crime Analyst Podcast, Dr. Santos offers us a rare glimpse into her crime analysis journey.