Projects
The Academy for Justice is consistently engaged in a plethora of projects that include long-term and short-term research, partnerships with other criminal justice reform organizations, and past events where knowledge and research were gained and compiled.
Here you can explore a number of projects we have worked on in the past or that are ongoing. Be sure to check back often to see what we will be working on in the future.
Featured Project
Measured Justice
Join us for our podcast MEASURED JUSTICE, covering criminal justice reform topics in America.
All projects
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NOBLE Roundtables and Community Engagement
The Academy for Justice—in collaboration with the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE)—has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions and community engagement opportunities to facilitate the exchange of ideas and innovations in the overlapping fields of policing and youth engagement, homelessness, mental health, and violence
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Cannabis, Crime, and Clemency
The President’s recent general pardon, pursuant to the Constitution, of simple marijuana possession offenses in violation of federal law (and the D.C. Code), represents a historic event in criminal justice reform and an important step toward correcting the lingering injustices of a national drug ban.
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Criminal Justice Reform Writing Contest
The Academy for Justice at the Sandra Day O’Connor of Law and Arizona State Law Journal are seeking applicants for the 2023 Criminal Justice Reform National Writing Competition to promote legal scholarship of criminal justice reform. This national writing competition seeks to promote legal scholarship centering on criminal justice reform. Submissions are due by Jule 1, 2023.
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Rethinking Crime and Violence
The Academy for Justice is excited to be launching its newest initiative, Rethinking Crime, and Violence. This initiative serves to comprehensively explore and reconcile violent crime and its role in the criminal justice system.
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The Appeal and Academy for Justice: Challenging the Prevailing Narrative on Violence
In partnership with the Academy for Justice at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, produced a series of articles that challenge the prevailing narrative on violence, each with a distinct strategic focus.
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Drugs and Public Safety
The Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University and the Academy for Justice at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University are organizing a symposium titled “Drugs and Public Safety: Exploring the Impact of Policy, Policing, and Prosecutorial Reforms” to examine the public safety impact of marijuana and other modern drug policy reforms.
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Innocent Behind Bars: A Symposium on Overcriminalization
Attendees listened to and interacted with scholars from across the country talk about the overcriminalization of vulnerable populations. Speakers discussed Professor Valena Beety’s book, Manifesting Justice, along with their own work to identify how women and vulnerable populations are uniquely impacted by incarceration.
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Miscarriages of Justice: A Symposium on New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions
A diverse group of practitioners and scholars recently gathered for a working-group process to create a Miscarriages of Justice Post-Conviction Innovation and Action Guide for Litigators that provides concrete and implementable guidance on miscarriage of justice claims. The hope is to better position litigators and incarcerated individuals to advocate for greater relief from wrongful convictions. The symposium will discuss their findings and recommendations.
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Valena Beety: Manifesting Justice
Her first book, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, is out now Amazon and Kensington Books. Find out more about why this book is important in today’s criminal justice landscape.
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Sentinel Event Reviews (SER)
In 2021, the ASU Foundation was awarded a $250,000 grant by the American Arbitration Association – International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR) Foundation to explore the development of a statewide system for conducting Sentinel Event Reviews (SER) of police use of force, particularly among vulnerable populations.
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Marijuana Clemency: Letter to President Biden
On September 14, 2021, a letter was delivered to President Joe Biden requesting a general pardon to all persons subject to federal criminal or civil enforcement on the basis of a nonviolent marijuana offense.
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Measured Justice
Join us for our podcast MEASURED JUSTICE, covering criminal justice reform topics in America.
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Guiding Points and Pitfalls for Reducing Reliance on Cash Bail
The Academy for Justice recently had the opportunity to work with an incoming District Attorney to formulate two best practice guides seeking to identify next steps, as well as potential pitfalls to avoid, on two specific topics based on available research.
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Recommendations and Resources for Prosecutors Considering Non-Prosecution Policies for Drug Offenses
Non-prosecution practices and policies have long been informally part of the fabric of the American criminal justice system, and more formal programs created by prosecutors have proliferated in modern times with growing and justified concerns about mass incarceration and mass punishment.
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Reducing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls:
The United States is now waking up to the fact that Indigenous Peoples have been oppressed by the dominant (non-Indigenous) culture for centuries. This oppression continues today and has led to a national and international crisis involving missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP).
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Legal-Ease Podcast
A podcast collaboration between the Academy for Justice and Legal-Ease Podcasts to bring you a partisan free discussion on current issues affecting the criminal justice system, without convoluted legalese, a word for fancy lawyer talk.
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Reforming Arizona Criminal Justice
The nation’s leading scholars recommend evidence-based solutions for Arizona.
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Reforming Criminal Justice
Reforming Criminal Justice is a four-volume report meant to enlighten reform efforts in the United States with the research and analysis of leading academics. Broken down into individual chapters—each authored by a top scholar in the relevant field—the report covers dozens of topics within the areas of criminalization, policing, pretrial and trial processes, punishment, incarceration, and release.
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Distinguished Lecture: Are Police the Key to Public Safety? The Case of the Unhoused
NYU Professor Barry Friedman, one of the country’s leading authorities on policing, gave the first ever Academy for Justice Distinguished Lecture: Are Police the Key to Public Safety? The Case of the Unhoused.
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Virtual Symposium on Covid-19 and Vulnerable Populations
The Academy for Justice at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, in conjunction with the Arizona State Law Journal Online, hosted a Virtual Symposium on COVID-19 and Vulnerable Populations to examine and challenge the pre-existing, health-harming legal and policy obstacles that are exacerbating the danger of the COVID-19 national health crisis to vulnerable populations.
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Breonna Taylor’s death: A case for examining racial bias in policing
On October 23, 2020 the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law hosted a day-long symposium on Breonna Taylor. Five panel discussions of lawyers, law professors, activists, practitioners, politicians, and students probed the legal issues surrounding the criminal charges and defenses, search warrant inconsistencies, damages awarded to the family, the federal investigation, and the impact of race on policing.
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Guilty Minds: A Virtual Conference on Mens Rea and Criminal Justice Reform
Accidents may be inevitable, but creating accidental criminals is not; rather, that’s a choice, and one that the criminal justice system should never make. But unfortunately, the criminal justice system has made this choice, repeatedly, by failing to account for a defendant’s mens rea—Latin for “guilty mind”—in imposing criminal liability and scaling punishment across a number of contexts.
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Controlled Substances Act at 50
In February 2020, the Academy for Justice at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, together marked a half-century of drug policy under the Controlled Substances Act by co-sponsoring a conference.
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Transforming the Police
On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, the Academy for Justice hosted Transforming the Police, a one-day conference at the at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Reentry Summit
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University sponsored the Summit on Reentry concerns in our criminal justice system (Summit).
Partner with us!
The Academy for Justice is constantly looking for the best ways to improve the criminal justice system. If your organization has an idea or a project that you’d like to collaborate on, let us know!