Criminal Justice Faculty

From left to right: Bill Perrill, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Phil Reichel, and John Barbrey

Full Time

At present there are four full-time faculty members in the Criminal Justice program. The following profiles provide a brief introduction to each.

Philip Reichel
Professor of Criminal Justice
Philip.Reichel@unco.edu

Philip Reichel received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Kansas State University. After working for a few years as a counselor at the Nebraska Correctional Complex in Lincoln, he decided teaching was more to his liking and accepted a position at Augusta College (now Augusta State University) in Augusta, Georgia. In 1983 he accepted a position at the University of Northern Colorado and has been here since that Fall semester. His areas of teaching, research, and writing expertise include comparative justice systems and the broad area of corrections. Professor Reichel has published twenty articles in several professional journals over the last thirty years and is the author of two textbooks; Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: A Topical Approach (Prentice Hall), and Introduction to Corrections (Allyn & Bacon). He is also the editor of the Handbook of Transnational Crime & Justice (Sage). His comparative justice interests have resulted in invitations to speak at universities throughout Europe and at several universities in the U.S. Currently he serves as the International Section Chair in the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Colleen Fitzpatrick
Professor of Criminal Justice
Colleen.Fitzpatrick@unco.edu

Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Colorado State University and a Master of Arts in Applied Sociology from California State University, Northridge. She has been on faculty at UNC since 1993. Professor Fitzpatrick is the author or co-author of several publications, the most recent of which appear in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education and the Journal of At-Risk Issues . She specializes in applied research and statistics in areas such as evaluation of services for severely abused children and efficacy of intermediate sanctions in probation. Her current research is focused on issues concerning education of youth at-risk for school failure, as well as a developing interest in victimology and victim services. Her scholarly interests are quite varied and include victimology, criminal law, juvenile delinquency, and ethics in criminal justice.

John Barbrey
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
John.Barbrey@unco.edu

Dr. John W. Barbrey has a B.A. in History from Clemson University and a Master of Public Administration from the Clemson / University of South Carolina joint program. He earned the Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tennessee in 2003, with subfields in Judicial Institutions and Behavior, and Policy Process. During the 2003 and 2004 academic years, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, Social and Political Science at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia. He spent the month of July 2004 in South Africa on a Fulbright-Hays Professional Development grant from the U.S. Department of Education. His research interests involve criminal law, GIS analysis, and crime in the Developing World.

Bill Perrill
Lecturer in Criminal Justice
Bill.Perrill@unco.edu

Bill Perrill is a graduate of  Northern Arizona Univesity and Bowling Green State University with degrees in Sociology/Criminology.  He retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2000 after a 29-year career.  The last 14 years he was the Warden of 5 different facilities. He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service of the United States in 1999, which is the highest level a federal employee can achieve.  He presented many  training sessions for regional and national conferences on leadership and prison management.  Mr. Perrill began teaching at UNC in 2001 as an adjunct instructor and since fall of 2002 has been a full-time faculty member. His areas of interest are in corrections, correctional administration, and criminological theory. 

Mary West-Smith
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
Mary.West-Smith@unco.edu

A native of Colorado, Mary West-Smith obtained all of her degrees from Colorado institutions of higher education. She received her Master of Criminal Justice and her Ph.D. in Public Affairs, with a concentration in criminal justice administration and policy, from the University of Colorado at Denver. Prior to joining the University of Northern Colorado Criminal Justice faculty in 2005, she worked on several governmental research projects and taught part-time at Metropolitan State College of Denver's Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. She also has experience working with victims of child abuse, at-risk juveniles, and incarcerated adults. Her current research interests focus on corrections, families of incarcerated individuals, and policies and practices concerning prisoners returning to society.