Paige Thompson is a senior research associate in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her research work focuses on interventions and policies aimed at reducing gun and group-related violence and increasing community safety, responsible fatherhood research and program evaluation, police-community relations, and human trafficking. 

Thompson is the principal investigator of the federally funded Fathers Advancing Communities Together-II Evaluation, a multiyear implementation and impact evaluation assessing participant perceptions and program outcomes for parents experiencing poverty in Contra Costa County, California. She coleads the Impact of Criminal Justice and Community-Based Interventions on Gun Violence Reduction Evaluation, which examines community-based and law enforcement antiviolence interventions in New York City. She also coleads the Community-Police Reconciliation Evaluation, an evaluation employing a community participatory engagement approach to examine the impact of a police-community reconciliation process in communities that have experienced historical harm and high crime rates. Thompson’s research applies mixed-methods approaches to process and impact evaluations to generate evidence-based recommendations for practitioners and policymakers.

Before joining Urban, Thompson was a graduate research assistant at the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, where she supported an evaluation of a co-responder model to improve police responses to mental health crises in Roanoke, Virginia. She holds a BA with distinction in psychology and women, gender, and sexuality from the University of Virginia and an MA in criminology, law, and society, with a concentration in policy and practice, from George Mason University.