Resources

This report outlines the findings from a survey conducted by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law School in collaboration with the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, and the North Carolina Department of Justice. The survey, which included responses from officers within your agency, asked about officers’ views on their roles, relationships with the community, and the challenges they face. By Jesse Lopez

Based on interviews conducted across urban and rural counties, this report examines the experience of people navigating the transition from incarceration to community life and makes recommendations to strengthen the process. By Samantha Richter

The database provides a searchable collection of court decisions addressing when and how forensic expert testimony is admitted in criminal cases in all fifty states and the federal system. The cases span more than 100 years and focus on the admissibility of expert testimony regarding three important disciplines: firearms, fingerprint, and shoeprint analysis.

This handbook is a a practical, step-by-step resource designed to help communities create or strengthen diversion programs that connect people to services instead of incarceration. It was developed by the North Carolina Technical Assistance Center, a statewide partnership that provides training, coaching, and technical assistance to communities. NC-TAC is a collaboration between the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, the North Carolina Formerly Incarcerated Transition Program, and the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, and is supported by the NC DHHS Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services.

By Brandon Garrett and Thomas Albright. This chapter appears in the Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a collaboration between the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Technology and the Federal Judicial Center. The manual is designed to support judges and other legal professions to ensure that science presented in the courtroom can be understood in the lens of the scientific method and reasoning.

This dashboard presents two decades of data on people serving life sentences in the United States. It draws from a national census of life imprisonment conducted approximately every four years between 2003 and 2024. The data were collected directly from corrections officials in all 50 states and the federal system. The growth of life sentences in the U.S. represents a major social and policy trend, yet comprehensive, nationwide statistics were not available until recently. The presentation of multiple years of data, along with key details about the population allows for the ability to observe and analyze how life and long-term sentences shape overall imprisonment trends.

This Amicus Brief was filed in the Supreme Court of the United States and coauthored with Duke Law’s Center for Criminal Justice and Responsibility. This brief urges the court to issue a issue an opinion reaffirming constitutional protections against gender-based jury discrimination.

This is the report from an independent analysis of the gunshot detection system’s use in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The report was commissioned by the City of Fayetteville to examine how ShotSpotter operated across three designated coverage zones from September 2023 through March 2025.

The evaluation reviewed data from 911 firearm-related calls for service, ShotSpotter’s internal “Ground Truth Tracking Workbook,” and Fayetteville’s public Open Data Portal. The study compared patterns before and after installation, both inside and outside ShotSpotter zones.

In Spring 2024, we received the most complete data so far available in North Carolina concerning people with paid and unpaid court debt in traffic cases, as well as resolved and unresolved driver’s license suspensions from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). We have analyzed and shared descriptive statistics concerning North Carolina traffic cases with such suspensions and made the aggregate data available through an interactive online dashboard so that people can interact with the data and examine local patterns. This is a companion piece to that dashboard.

This dashboard offers unprecedented access to data on driver’s license suspensions across North Carolina related to unpaid court fines and missed court appearances. The dashboard is an interactive tool designed to help researchers, policymakers, and advocates understand how court debt contributes to long-term license suspensions in the state.