Jeffrey Aaron, Ph.D. is a clinical and forensic psychologist who serves as Juvenile Justice & Behavioral Health Program Manager for the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Services, where he focuses on the intersection of the mental health and juvenile justice systems.  Previously, Dr. Aaron was the Director of the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents (CCCA), Virginia’s only state-operated psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents, and prior to that role, served as Clinical Director of an adolescent inpatient unit, Ethics Committee chair, Forensic Coordinator, and Director of Psychology at CCCA.

Dr. Aaron is on the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and is associate faculty at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry & Public Policy, also at UVa.  He conducts forensic psychological evaluations of adolescents and adults, with areas of specialization that include adolescent decision-making, mitigation, juvenile transfer, evaluating confession evidence, trial competency, and post traumatic stress.  He has provided invited testimony before the Virginia House and Senate and has presented across Virginia and nationally on forensic and clinical mental health evaluation, adolescent development and legal decision-making, trauma, and other clinical and forensic topics.

Dr. Aaron was a member of the Mental Health Workgroup of the Virginia Governor’s Task Force on School and Campus Safety, and the Charlottesville/Albemarle gang intervention project known as Gang Reduction through Active Community Engagement. He is currently focused on understanding and trying to improve interactions between police and youth, given the potential for those interactions to be highly consequential. A primary focus of this work is training, including providing training to law enforcement officers to help them better understand youth, assessment of the need and rationale for such training, and evaluation of its effectiveness.