By Annie Han Driving is critical for many people in North Carolina. North Carolinians need to drive to work, to take their children to school, and to complete other everyday tasks like grocery shopping and attending to their health. But, as important as is the right to drive, it can easily be taken away as […]
Tag: criminal justice reform
Duke Professor Co-Authors Washington Post Opinion Piece About ‘Broken’ Policing System
John Rappaport and Ben Grunwald are no strangers to writing about flaws in the American policing system – you may recognize their bylines from their research last year about wandering officers, a coin they termed for police officers who were fired by one department, often for something serious, but who later found work in another […]
What Prisons Could Still Do to Save Lives
By Deniz Ariturk Six months after the first nationwide shutdown, US prisons and jails continue to be top COVID hot spots. Case numbers have continued to increase rapidly in prisons even as they plateaued nationwide in early summer, and new weekly cases peaked in August. By September 8, a total of 121,217 incarcerated people had […]
Postdoc Karima Modjadidi Headed to RTI after Duke CSJ Fellowship
Last week was Post-doctoral Fellow Karima Modjadidi’s last at the Duke Law Center for Science and Justice, and soon she will start working at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in Durham. Modjadidi has been a fellow at the Center for two years, and she will transition to similar work at RTI in the courts and […]
Meet This Summer’s Duke CSJ Student Interns, Fellows
The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t slowed down the six students who worked with the Duke Center for Science and Justice this summer. The summer fellowships and internships at the Center provide students an opportunity to learn new information and hone their skills in domains that are useful for the next step in their career, whether it’s […]
Book Review – Lethal State: A History of the Death Penalty in North Carolina
The following book review of Lethal State: A History of the Death Penalty in North Carolina by author Seth Kotch was written by Duke Center for Science and Justice Director Brandon Garrett and posted on the Rutgers Newark site. Today, age – and now COVID – and not the execution chamber, are the lethal agents […]
NC Lawmakers to Gov. Cooper: It’s Time to Release Ronnie Long
Fourteen North Carolina lawmakers from across the state are urging Gov. Roy Cooper to commute Ronnie Long’s sentence – he is represented by Jamie Lau at Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic. Long, a Black man who is now 64, was convicted in 1976 by an all white jury for the rape of a wealthy […]
Report: Justice System Must Improve Quality of Forensic Science for Courtroom Presentation
Is forensic science in the courtroom as trustworthy as it seems? Not always, according to a new report co-authored by Duke Center for Science and Justice Research Director William Crozier. “Faulty forensic science sometimes makes its way into the courtroom where jurors must evaluate its credibility,” the report abstract states. “But at least two factors […]
Indy Week Publishes Powerful Letter to Cooper About COVID-19 in Prisons After Faye Brown’s Death
Ninety-eight people who are incarcerated in a federal prison in this country have died from COVID-19 in the past four months, and North Carolina is bearing the brunt of those losses with 25 deaths out of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex. There have also been six deaths in state-run prisons in North Carolina. Save for […]
U Penn Law Faculty Discusses Pretrial Improvements at CSJ Crim Works in Progress
This week’s Duke Center for Science and Justice Crim Works in Progress webinar featured a presentation by Paul Heaton on his work about how enhanced public defense can improve pretrial outcomes and reduce racial disparities. Heaton, Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a Senior Fellow and Academic Director of the Quattrone Center, […]