Janet I. Warren, DSW, is Professor Emerita of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at University of Virginia (UVA). In this capacity, she served as teaching and research faculty at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, a multi-disciplinary policy center organized under the auspices of the School of Law and the School of Medicine at the UVA. In her position at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, Dr. Warren provided training on conducting forensic evaluations for the courts and specializes in evaluations that focus on assessing the risk for violent behavior among juveniles and adults, the examination of individuals charged with sexual crimes, and the legal decisional capacity of adolescents and young adults.

Dr. Warren was the UVA liaison to the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) and has worked with the BSU in developing paradigms relevant to the criminal investigative analyses of sexual offenders including distinctions between impulsive versus ritualistic sex offenders, and the elements of modus operandi, ritual, and signature displayed in an offender’s crime scene behavior. She has also collaborated with the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in conducting research on the crime scene analysis of serial rape, sexually sadistic murder, and child abduction and murder. She has worked previously with Don K. Brown in developing GPS methods for conducting geographical profiling of serial sexual offenders and in creating software for police departments to use in identifying hot spots of for use in deploying resources in a timely manner.

In 2007, Dr. Warren received funding from the National Institute of Justice to conduct a three-year study of sexual violence and victimization in prison in response to the passing of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. This research resulted in the publication of a book in 2013, Risk Markers for Sexual Predation and Victimization in Prison, which explored risk markers for coerced, bartered, and consensual sex in prison for both male and female inmates. In 2010, she began a decade of study for the Boy Scouts of America of their Ineligible Volunteer (IV) “P” (Perversion) files created by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from 1944 through 2016 resulting in a database of 7,819 alleged perpetrators and 12,254 known victims. In 2017, She was awarded funding by the National Institute of Justice to conduct research concerning the use of social media to prompt the radicalization of women to acts of extremist violence.

Dr. Warren has published in peer reviewed journals on topics including child sexual abuse, serial rape, child abduction and murder, crime scene analysis of sexually sadistic crimes involving children and adults, consensual and coerced sex in prisons, risk factors for violence, personality disorders, psychopathy, female inmates, linkage analysis involving sexual crimes, the use of third party information in conducting evaluations for the courts, forensic evaluation and opinion formation for the courts, and juvenile adjudicative competency and restoration. Many of these publications have derived from research funding by the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Boy Scouts of America, and the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Dr. Warren has a BSW and a MSW from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and a doctorate in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a clinical social worker licensed by the Virginia Board of Social Work, a Sex Offender Treatment Provider (1994) licensed by the Virginia Board of Psychology, and a psychoanalyst accredited by the New York Freudian Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Dr. Warren has been a Forensic Expert with Park Dietz & Associates since 2000.