Karen Kane has more than 30 years of experience in the field of justice-related research and data management including identifying organizational data needs, developing and coordinating data sources, designing and implementing systems to collect and manage data, designing and customizing reports and data tools for users, researching and analyzing data and presenting results in a consumable and understandable format.
Karen started her career as a researcher, and later as Director of Research, for the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA), a not-for-profit organization overseeing public defense services in New York State (NYS), conducting, analyzing and distributing state and county-wide empirical research related to public defense issues. Thereafter, she went on to be the Capital Data Manager for the New York State Capitol Defender Office (CDO). There, her responsibilities included overseeing the collection and analysis of homicide case and demographic data for purposes of proportionality review.
When the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional and the CDO was no longer required, Karen began her more than 16 year career with NYS Unified Court System’s Office of Court Research, serving in several management roles and then becoming the Director of the Unit in 2018. As Director of Court Research, Karen’s portfolio includes overseeing the Court Research Data Team, the Office of Jury Support (OJS), the Criminal Disposition Reporting (CDR) Unit and the Criminal History Records Search (CHRS) Unit.
The Court Research Data Team and OJS provide executive staff, policymakers, judges, and court managers, of all court types, with data, analysis, reports, performance measures and analysis tools to support decision-making and operations with respect to efficient case management, jury system management and improvement, court operations and administrative efficiencies. The CDR Unit’s primary mission is to ensure the accurate and timely reporting of court data while the CHRS Unit is tasked with running hundreds of thousands of criminal history searches annually for potential employers, government entities and other customers.
Karen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice and Sociology from the State University of New York at Albany and a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice from the University of Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy.