Spring '24 News & Updates
I hope you all had a chance to enjoy our newest publication - The Notebook. It is a free digital collection of art, scholarship, opinion, and personal insight dedicated to the theme of community vitality. It honors our commitment to justice, community, and collaboration. We’ve seen a welcome influx of engagement across multiple platforms since we launched The Notebook two weeks ago, and so it seems like the perfect time to share an update on the other efforts that keep the JC crew busy. In this newsletter, we share a round-up of recent successes, research highlights, and an in-depth review of our work running Yale Law School’s Policing, Law, & Policy clinic.
Thank you all for enthusiastically engaging with The Notebook and for supporting our work at the Justice Collaboratory. We feel the love.
Caroline Nobo, Executive Director
The JC is Now on TikTok! Check us out for an inside look at The Notebook.
JC News & Updates
Member Spotlight: Marisol Orihuela
Marisol Orihuela
Marisol Orihuela, Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, recently launched the Mental Health Justice Clinic at Yale Law School.
“Our approach is to define mental health broadly and consider how it impacts our clients in a variety of legal settings—this allows for a richer understanding of how things that we call mental health or experience as mental health affect people's ability to maneuver legal systems.”
Read more about Professor Orihuela’s work in centering mental health justice.
Member Highlights
Jason Stanley has accepted a visiting position at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine. Beginning in the summer of 2024, he will return to Kyiv for several weeks teaching an intensive course.
Congratulations to James Forman Jr. on his appointment and inaugural lecture as the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law.
Congratulations to BJ Casey on winning the Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award.
Our first CBPAR project just wrapped – read the report!
How do Communities Respond to Gun Violence Prevention Policies?
This New Haven community-focused study explores how gun violence prevention efforts affects individuals considered at high risk of being directly impacted by gun violence. Using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) model, the study elevates the voices of gun violence prevention program participants and impacted communities who can best attest to the influence and power of the message and services received. Read the full study here.
Current Research Projects
Repairing Community Trust: The Role of Credible Messengers on Reducing Justice System Involvement in New Haven, CT
A new community-based participatory action research approach (CBPAR) study will explore how trust is gained and repaired in historically marginalized, justice-impacted communities and how credible messengers deter justice system involvement and decrease violence – with a specific focus on the New Haven community.
Analyzing Traffic Stops
The Justice Collaboratory is currently consulting with the Connecticut ACLU about cutting-edge statistical analyses of traffic stops across Connecticut in recent years. This work aims to uncover various individual- and structural-level factors driving disparate rates of stops where they are identified.
Understanding Moral Injury in People with Histories of Incarceration
We are currently collecting pilot survey data to begin to explore how experiences of moral injury predict PTSD in people with histories of incarceration. The long-term goal is to adapt evidence-based treatments for moral injury in veterans to meet the specific needs of people returning home from incarceration.
Learn more about the Policing, Law & Policy Clinic at Yale Law School
Developing a New Search and Seizure Policy
The Policing Clinic has been assisting the New Haven Police Department in developing a new search and seizure policy as part of its effort to gain departmental accreditation from the Connecticut Police Officer Standards and Training Council. The clinic produced two sets of policies that respectively governed searches and seizures conducted with and without a warrant.
Jorge Camacho
Evaluating Police Officer Standards and Training Commissions (POSTs)
The Policing Clinic is continuing its review and evaluation of Police Officer Standards and Training Commissions (POSTs), which regulate minimum standards of police officer employment and training in each state and the District of Columbia. As a follow up to the POST Study in Variability released last year, the clinic will soon release a report card that grades each POST on a variety of metrics, including its membership composition, authority to robustly regulate policing standards within its state, and overall structure. The report card will give policymakers an accessible reference guide that offers a snapshot summary of their POST and how it compares to its peers across the country.
In November 2023, JC’s Policy Director Jorge Camacho presented preliminary findings from the POST evaluation project at the annual conference of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE).
Guiding Police Oversight Bodies toward Greater Legitimacy
Students in the clinic are also developing guidance for improving the efficacy of local police oversight bodies like civilian review boards, particularly given the increased hostility from state officials seeking to curb the already limited power of these bodies. The clinic plans to produce a guide that identifies how local police oversight bodies, including those with no binding authority, can be effective agents of transparency, legitimacy, advocacy, and expertise for the communities they serve.
The Future of Miranda
In January 2024 Jorge participated in a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on The Future of Miranda in the Roberts Court. My presentation discussed the policy and jurisprudential impact of a reversal of Miranda by the Supreme Court, including the extent to which such a reversal would and would not impact local and state-level policing given the existence of other laws, policies, and state court decisions that replicate Miranda’s mandate. The presentation was informed by past work of clinic students who researched Miranda and related policies in prior semesters.
Work with the JC!
We are currently inviting applications for the following 2024-2025 postdoctoral fellowships. Both positions are a full-time, 12-month appointments located in New Haven, CT. Applications are due by March 30, 2024.
Joint Postdoctoral Fellow – SEICHE Center for Health and Justice & The Justice Collaboratory
This is a joint appointment with The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice at Yale School of Medicine. This position is intended for individuals who are interested in an academic or policy career working on the intersections of social science, law, medicine, and public health, with a particular interest in conducting research that takes a public health approach to understanding the harms caused by the criminal legal system and informing policy reform.
Social Science and Law Postdoctoral Fellow
This position is intended for individuals who are interested in an academic or policy career working on the intersections of social science and law, with a particular interest in conducting research that informs improvements in outcomes and legitimacy of the criminal justice system.
Publication Roundup
Here are some of the most recent publications from JC members:
Grüning, D. J., Kamin, J., Panizza, F., Katsaros, M., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2024). A framework for promoting online prosocial behavior via digital interventions. Communications Psychology, 2(1).
Zhao, L., & Papachristos, A. V. (2024) Threats to Blue Networks: The Effect of Partner Injuries on Police Misconduct. American Sociological Review, 89(1), 159-195.
Wittlin, N. M., LaFrance, M., Dovidio, J. F., & Richeson, J. A. (2024). US cisgender women’s psychological responses to physical femininity threats: Increased anxiety, reduced self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 110, 104547.
Skalaban, L. J., Chan, I., Rapuano, K., Lin, Q., Conley, M. I., Watts, R. R., ... & Casey, B. J. (2023) Representational Dissimilarity of Faces and Places during a Working Memory Task is Associated with Subsequent Recognition Memory during Development. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1-20.
Richman, I. B., Soulos, P. R., Lin, H., Aminawung, J. A., Oladeru, O. T., Puglisi, L. B., ... & Gross, C. P. (2023). Incarceration and Screen-Detectable Cancer Diagnosis among Adults in Connecticut. JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, djad242.