Events

September 1, 2021 — Wilson Center for Science and Justice hosts an expert panel discussion about frontline programs for individuals returning from incarceration and how they can support re-entry with healthcare and peer support. This event focuses on meeting program clients' behavioral health needs. Panelists are Shira Shavit, MD, Executive Director of the Transitions Clinic Network (TCN) out of San Francisco; Joseph Calderon, Senior Community Health Worker with TCN; Evan Ashkin, MD, Director of the North Carolina Formerly Incarcerated Transition (FIT) Program; and Tommy Green, NC FIT Program Lead Community Health Worker (CHW) and the Orange County CHW. These experts have direct involvement with development and practice in frontline programming, both nationally and in NC. Dr. Allison Gilbert, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, moderates.

Jul 23, 2021 — The Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law hosts a roundtable discussion about people with mental illnesses who are criminally accused and found incompetent to proceed in the criminal legal system. Topics include how competency restoration poses a challenge and costly management problem for state mental health and criminal legal systems; alternative pathways to community reentry for this population; the ethical-legal aspects; how mental health authorities and policymakers in different states are (or aren't) dealing with it, and what should be done. Panelists are Dr. Reena Kapoor, from Yale School of Medicine; Dr. Debra Pinals, from University of Michigan Law and Medicine; W. Lawrence Fitch, from University of Maryland Francis King Cary School of Law; and Dr. William Fisher, who works with the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. Dr. Jeffrey Swanson from Duke School of Medicine moderated.

April 30, 2021 — Civil commitment and the mental health care continuum: Historical trends and principles for law and practice. Jeffrey Swanson is Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. Larry Fitch is a lawyer on the faculty of the University of Maryland, where he teaches classes on mental health law in the Law School and lectures in the forensic psychiatry fellowship program in the Medical School.

Apr 15, 2021 — Novel Justice is a book event series hosted by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice. We invite authors to discuss recently published criminal justice books and to engage in Q&A with faculty and students. Aya Gruber is Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. Her book, The Feminist War on Crime: the Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration, documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Join us for a conversation and Q&A with Gruber about her work. Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett is host.

April 9, 2021 — Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) is a community-based diversion approach with the goals of improving public safety and public order and reducing unnecessary justice system involvement of people who participate in the program. A panel of experts discussed their work and experience with LEAD. They are Lisa Daugaard, Director of the Public Defender Association; Reed Baer, Deputy Chief of Police of the Hickory Police Department in North Carolina; and Charlton Roberson, a peer support specialist from Fayetteville's LEAD program. Allison Robertson, Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke, and Melissia Larson, LEAD Coordinator at North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, moderated.

April 2, 2021 — Duke Law Professor and Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett's new book, Autopsy of a Crime Lab, Exposing the Flaws in Forensics, is the first to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. This video documents a roundtable discussion about the book and its findings with Garrett; Erin Murphy, Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties at New York University School of Law; Edward Cheng, the Hess Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School; and Jennifer Mnookin, Dean, Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Professor of Law, and Faculty Co-Director of Program on Understanding Law, Science and Evidence at UCLA Law.

March 29, 2021 — Duke Law professor and Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett and Sandra Guerra Thompson, professor of law and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center, discuss their work as independent monitors for a landmark bail reform settlement in Texas. This settlement could become a national model for cash bail reform. The discussion is followed by a Q & A.

March 15, 2021 — Formerly incarcerated individuals face many barriers when re-entering their communities. Learn more about those barriers and the programs successfully addressing them, and hear from formerly incarcerated individuals who have experienced trying to re-enter society. The roundtable for this event includes Alice Marie Johnson, a criminal justice reform advocate and former federal prisoner pardoned by former President Donald Trump; Dontae Sharpe, a North Carolina exoneree who now works at Forward Justice; and Elenore Wade, who teaches as a Visiting Associate Professor of Clinical Law & Friedman Fellow at The George Washington University Law School's Prisoner & Reentry Clinic. The panel is followed by a Q&A. Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett moderates.