Rate My Professor Kristina Childs Fisher

Dr. Kristina Childs Fisher serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice within the University of Central Florida's College of Community Innovation and Education. She received her Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology from the University of South Florida in 2008, with a dissertation on the association among risky sexual behavior, substance use, and criminal involvement among juvenile offenders. She also earned her Master of Arts in Criminology from the University of South Florida in 2005 and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Michigan State University in 2002. Her professional trajectory includes a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Louisiana Models for Change initiative at the University of New Orleans from 2008 to 2011. She joined UCF as an Assistant Professor in 2011, advancing to Associate Professor in 2017.

Childs Fisher's academic interests center on juvenile justice issues, including the problem behavior syndrome, public health challenges in juvenile corrections, disproportional minority contact in the justice system, risk assessment tools, and law enforcement-mental health co-responder models for at-risk youth. Her prolific publication record features over 70 peer-reviewed articles and contributions to books. Key works include co-authoring the book Juvenile Risk and Needs Assessment: Theory, Research, Policy, and Practice published by Routledge in 2021; "An assessment of the internal structure of the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) Using two samples of high-risk adolescents" in Children and Youth Services Review (2024); "Examining the measurement precision of behavior problems among a sample of primarily rural youth on juvenile probation" in Children and Youth Services Review (2023); and "Youth Mental Health First Aid: Examining the influence of pre-existing attitudes and knowledge on training effectiveness" in The Journal of Primary Prevention (2021). She has earned prestigious honors such as the 2023 Department of Criminal Justice Outstanding Mentor Award, the 2017 UCF Research Incentive Award, the 2017 UCF Excellence in Research Award, and the 2015 Outstanding Criminology Ambassador Award from the University of South Florida. Through her research, Childs Fisher has made significant impacts, notably developing a mobile crisis intervention unit in collaboration with local law enforcement and mental health providers, which has demonstrated over a 90% reduction in involuntary youth commitments under Florida's Baker Act.