Nancy Digby Franke, Ph.D., MSW

Nancy Franke, Ph.D., MSW is an assistant professor in the Social Work Department. Her research and teaching is informed by her social work practice at the intersection of social work and criminal legal systems. Nancy’s dissertation was a mixed-methods investigation into the post-release experiences of people who, as children (ages 12-17) had been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Through several Supreme Court decisions, some serving those sentences were able to find paths to freedom. That national study included 78 quantitative surveys (with a social network analysis component) as well as 46 in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews.

As a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, Nancy was the Inaugural Doctoral Fellow of the Community Justice And Equity (CJAE) Initiative, focusing on diversion courts and policing. Nancy also was a Research Associate at the University of Michigan, where she was the primary data analyst for the 2015 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). Prior to that work, Nancy was the Director of the Goldring Reentry Initiative, a program in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice that acted as a field placement to annually train 15 MSW students while supporting 100 people pre and post release from the Philadelphia Department of Prisons.

At La Salle, Nancy primarily teaches human development, policy, and social work research courses here at La Salle. She is also trained as an instructor through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Nancy is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Paraguay, 2009-11).

Education
Ph.D., Social Work, University of Maryland
MSW, University of Pennsylvania
BA, Gettysburg College

Areas of Expertise
Criminal justice, prisoner reentry, juvenile lifer, juvenile life without parole, JLWOP, mixed-methods, social network analysis, qualitative research, prostitution diversion court, police diversion