UC grad brings unique perspective to criminal justice work

“That was a big part of my life,” she says, explaining that she’s grateful for the caring involvement of both her parents in her life, which extended to her father providing on-the-job experiences. “I was always very aware of what he did, and when I was a teenager I loved going on ride-alongs with him. It's just always been something that fascinated me.”

This fascination led Payne to criminal justice as a field of study in college, even without the calling to drive a police cruiser of her own. Rather, she was drawn to the academic side of her father’s work during her time as an undergrad at Indiana University, where her next step as a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Criminal Justice was presented to her.

“I think it was the beginning of my senior year of undergrad, I had a professor who was just finishing his PhD at UC,” she explains. “I didn't really have a plan for exactly what I wanted to do, career-wise. I just knew that, as a whole, the field fascinated me. And I was very fortunate that Dr. Brown said, Well, it doesn't matter because … you're going to University of Cincinnati. They're the best, so that's where we're going to send you.” 

Listen to the full conversation with Ashley Payne on the "CECH Chats" podcast!

Payne was one of the first in her family to attend college and didn’t have a clear notion of what grad school even was, but her professor helped her fill out the application and provided a letter of recommendation. Soon enough she was accepted to UC’s MS in Criminal Justice program where she worked with such notable names as Pat Van Voorhis and Ed LaTessa, both of whom helped her develop a love for research. “They really set a great example of how working in the field as a consultant works and mentored me and gave me a lot of opportunities to do that as a graduate student,” she says. “So when I went into this afterwards, I really knew what to do and had a lot of great connections in the field already.”

She enrolled and was accepted into UC’s PhD in Criminal Justice program, but Payne realized soon into her postgrad studies that a career as a professor wasn’t her career ambition. But she enjoyed taking classes and working with faculty, so she stayed at UC for four years before leaving the program, at which point she took a research associate job with the UC Corrections Institute and returned to the classroom in pursuit of a Master’s in Business Administration through UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business.

“It was kind of a long way to get there,” she says. “But all of those different classes and opportunities built a great foundation to be able to do what I do. My primary focus has been on correctional rehabilitation, and adding in the business side of things, I also got into criminal justice management leadership. It gave me a broader focus.”

She officially founded the Bauman Consulting Group in 2012, in part because she wanted the flexibility that self-employment could provide her and her young family. Since then, the consulting company has expanded to work with departments of correction, law enforcement agencies, court systems, state and county governments, nonprofits, mental health organizations and more—“anyone that touches the criminal justice system,” she says, explaining that she and her full-service agency bring clients applied research to develop a variety of improvements.

“Recently, we worked with a department that had implemented a new model for co-response when they have a call involving someone in a mental health crisis,” she explains. “We did an evaluation for them to determine if they were getting positive outcomes as a result of that.” Additional consulting services range from helping with strategic plan implementation to staffing analysis and workforce training. 

“We do a lot of work with probation agencies and prisons and police departments, court systems, on how to integrate research practices into what we're doing or what we've learned from research or best practices,” she says. “We do continuous quality improvement work, which I think is really interesting. For instance, a probation officer might send us a video recording of an appointment they have with a client, and we go through and give them feedback on what they're doing in those sessions and how to be more effective with helping that individual change their behavior.”

Despite taking some time to find her way to a consulting career, Bauman says she loves the work she’s able to do and the life she’s built. And though consulting might not be the first career one associates with a criminal justice degree, for someone passionate about research it can present a rewarding work experience.

“My advice is to learn everything that you can,” she says. “When someone hires a consultant, they're looking for them to have information that they don't have. I've never been a police officer or a probation officer, right? I will never tell these folks, this is what it's like to do that job, because I've never done it. But I know a lot of things that they don't know. I'm steeped in the research, and I can tell them what agencies are doing all over the country. I can give them a perspective that they don't have.”

Though she didn’t complete the degree work, she’s grateful for the time she spent in UC’s Criminal Justice PhD program, just as she sees value in the MBA she received while working for UCCI. 

“We think of criminal justice as government and business school as private sector, but what I learned was that the two have a lot of similarities,” she says, noting that, for her as a business owner, the MBA education was directly applicable. “But what it also helped me to do was understand the challenges that these government agencies were dealing with. Rather than solely focusing on research, which was a big piece of what I learned in the Criminal Justice program, I also looked at things like policy and procedure and staffing issues. For lack of a better term, government agencies are also businesses, and they have to keep their staff happy, keep them trained and employed and handle policy and have things like a strategic plan that guides what they do.

“I think the two really complemented each other nicely and gave me a perspective that, quite frankly, is fairly unique in our field.”

Having benefited so much from her UC education, Payne now gives back by teaching two online courses, Policing in America and Introduction to Criminology, through UC’s Blue Ash campus. 

“It's been really an awesome opportunity,” she says. “I love to work with students as well because often those students become employees at the organizations I consult with. And so it's a great way to be able to give back to the community to help develop great employees that will be working in the field someday.”

Featured image at top: Ashley Payne, President/Criminal Justice Consultant/Leadership Coach at Bauman Consulting Group. Photo/Provided