Faculty / Phil Harris

Phil Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. His teaching and research have focused primarily on the areas of juvenile justice, juvenile correctional strategies, and organizational and system development. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Criminal Justice at The University at Albany (SUNY) in 1979. Prior to coming to Temple in 1980, Phil spent four years as a juvenile correctional administrator in Canada. There he directed the professional services department of a large private agency, developed training for staff and designed the agency’s management information system. From 1989 to 1995 Phil directed the Juvenile Corrections Leadership Forum, a program of leadership development for state-level juvenile corrections directors, funded by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. JCLF was the platform for launching the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators.

Beginning in 1992, he and Peter Jones designed and implemented an outcome-based information system, ProDES, that provides a continuous flow of outcome information on all programs that receive youths from Philadelphia’s Family Court. Output from this system has included multiple evaluations of more than ninety programs. In 1999, ProDES was a finalist in the Innovations in American Government competition sponsored by Harvard University and the Ford Foundation. He is now assisting Philadelphia in building an internal outcomes measurement system and has assisted other agencies in developing similar systems. He is currently writing a book on Matching Delinquent Youths to Programs. In 2001, Phil received the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Government Service Award given annually by the American Evaluation Association.