Support Our Initiatives
For those who believe that a university's obligation extends beyond its classrooms—to the communities and justice system it exists within—the Wilson Center is where that obligation becomes action. Your sponsorship of the Wilson Center initiatives below supports that action through the clients we represent, the research we produce, the policy conversations we shape, and the students who will carry this forward. Learn more about the initiatives below, and contact our executive director Yvette Garcia Missri to discuss ways to sponsor these programs.
The Policy Lab
Our Policy Lab works at the intersection of research and real-world reform—partnering with communities, policymakers, and practitioners to expose what isn’t working and to build solutions that do. Working with community members, students, and other partners, our policy team has delivered solutions to challenging problems, such as a toolkit with best practices for law enforcement agencies interested in implementing diversion programs, a reader-friendly analysis of the impacts of the nation’s first federal bail reform consent decree, and research contributions to bipartisan coalitions working to reform driver’s license suspension laws and compassionate medical release laws. Through this work, our Policy Lab ensures that evidence drives change where it matters most.
Wrongful Convictions Prevention
Every wrongful conviction represents a double injustice: an innocent person loses years or decades of their life behind bars, while the person who actually committed the crime may remain free. Nearly 500 people have been exonerated through DNA evidence in the United States, and countless more remain wrongfully imprisoned.
We to prevent these injustices before they occur. While many organizations work to free the wrongfully convicted after the fact, the Center focuses on identifying and fixing the systemic flaws that allow wrongful convictions to happen in the first place. Through rigorous research, practical policy development, and strategic legal analysis, we provide the tools and evidence that defense attorneys, innocence organizations, and policymakers need to challenge unreliable practices and reform broken systems.
Second Chances and Legal Advocacy
In North Carolina, thousands of people are held in prison who pose no threat to public safety. People with terminal illnesses or severe cognitive decline. People who have transformed themselves during years of incarceration. Pathways home exist—parole, compassionate release, clemency—but most people face these processes without needed support and legal representation, making release nearly impossible to achieve.
The Second Chances and Legal Advocacy Initiative is where research meets individual lives. We provide and facilitate legal advocacy—offering hope to incarcerated people who find themselves without access to legal services. Our research informs that advocacy, and what we learn from both research and advocacy drives the systemic changes we work to make possible.
Legal Representation in North Carolina’s Youth Prisons
There are hundreds of incarcerated children across NC. The vast majority have experienced childhood trauma, and incarceration often compounds it. While adults in prison have an entire organization dedicated to advocating for their legal needs, children have no one to turn to for help. Without lawyers, there are few outside eyes monitoring youth prisons and no one making sure kids get adequate therapy and educational services. Children typically receive sentences with no set release date, meaning the prison decides when they go home. Many children feel forgotten—and without an advocate, they often are.
In 2024, Sam Lawrence joined the Wilson Center as an Equal Justice Works Fellow to change the system and offer kids hope. Drawing on his background in law and social work, Sam has designed and implemented a model of holistic defense for incarcerated children. He represents children at monthly progress meetings at the prisons where he advocates for better conditions and services. Sam also crafts reentry plans to accelerate release and prevent recidivism.