News
Please view this interesting op-ed piece that the Washington Post Published for our faculty member, Noura Erakat.
Dear CJ students,
I write this with a heavy heart. On April 16, a beloved and superb teacher, scholar, and friend, the former Director of the Program in Criminal Justice, Pat Carr, died from the cancer he had been battling for almost a decade.
Prof. Carr joined Rutgers, in Sociology and Criminal Justice, in 2005. He was well known for his outstanding work on young people and policing, youth violence and social control, and the transition to adulthood, including the books Clean Streets, Hollowing Out the Middle, Coming of Age in America, and Theories of Crime. But he always said that he was happiest in the classroom. His students meant the world to him. Even as he was back in treatment last spring, he didn’t miss a single class meeting, a testament to his dedication to his students.
I recall that I wanted to see him teach last year, so I sat in on a session of his Juvenile Justice class. He did a marvelous job of providing information and asking questions, giving students lots of time to talk, and yet keeping the class focused, and all with his normal sharp wit. I then found out that he hadn’t even planned to teach that day; he was supposed to have a guest lecturer, but the guest canceled at the last minute and Prof. Carr just stepped up without missing a beat. Only the best teachers can do that.
He was, to quote Julie Philips, the chair of the Department of Sociology, “a valued and beloved colleague – he gave honest and savvy advice, often with a dose of his wicked humor, and was extremely thoughtful, creative and resourceful in addressing problems. He was one of a kind.”
In the future, we as a Program will be devising other ways to honor him as well. We’ll keep you posted as those plans become concrete.
Meanwhile, if you'd like, you can make a donation to the Calliope Joy Foundation, established by Pat and his wife Maria Kefalas after their daughter was diagnosed with leukodystrophy. If you would like to send a note of condolence to Pat’s family, you can send to Maria Kefalas and his children (Camille (20), PJ (17) and Cal (10)), 420 Conshohocken State Road, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004.
You can find other remembrances of Pat Carr here:
Rutgers Today
Beacon Press
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Yours,
Alec Walen
Director, Program in Criminal Justice
Dr. Amanda Agan's paper on economic effects of “Ban the Box” legislation was nominated as one of the top 12 papers published in 2018.
https://qz.com/1508659/twelve-leading-economists-on-the-research-that-shaped-our-world-in-2018/
Her work was nominated by Claudia Goldin of Harvard. Claudia is widely considered a top candidate for the Nobel Prize in economics.
The Criminal Justice Org and the Criminal Justice Honor Society hosted Alumni Clark Abrams, the chief of the Money Laundering and Financial Investigations Unit for the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor of NYC on November 27th, 2018. Click the link below to find out what he said to our students.
Dr. Lauren Krivo of the Program in Criminal Justice has been elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. Alongside Dr. Krivo is a graduate student of Sociology at Rutgers University, Brooklynn Hitchens, who was presented with the Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity by the American Society of Criminology.
Mark Desire estimates that his team had tried to identify the bone half a dozen times over the past 17 years — ever since it was recovered amid the rubble of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Each time, they came up short.
As part of New York City’s effort to identify the remains of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack, Mr. Desire, the assistant director of forensic biology for the city’s Medical Examiner’s office, and his colleagues had been unable to extract enough DNA from the sample to make a positive identification.
Mark Desire, Professor with the Program in Criminal Justice, used DNA analysis to nab James Webb for a 1994 rape. The article can be found here: Mark Desire Article
Dr. Anne Morrison Piehl is the 2015 recipient of the Rutgers College Class of 1962 Presidential Public Service Award. The Rutgers College Class of 1962 Presidential Public Service Award honors members of the faculty, student body, or staff for volunteer service to government, professional and scholarly organizations, or the public.
Read more: Dr. Anne M. Piehl, Winner of 2015 Presidential Public Service Award
Milena A. Wilson, Esq., Lecturer with the Program in Criminal Justice, published an article with New Jersey Law Journal on May 8, 2017. The article can be found here: Milena Wilson Article
Photo: Larry Levanti
Tom Ridge
"Mass casualty events – terrorism, natural disasters and biological superbugs – are the challenges of the 21st century and confronting them calls for multidisciplinary public-private partnerships.
'For the next generation of homeland security professionals, multidisciplined public-private collaboration must be a part of your DNA,' said Tom Ridge, the country’s first homeland security secretary and keynote speaker at a Rutgers conference that brought together experts in emergency preparedness, disaster response and homeland security.
Read more: Rutgers Launches New Institute for Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security
Lieutenant Raymond Trigg, Lecturer with the Program in Criminal Justice, is part of the Law Enforcement Collaborative Program with N.B.P.D. and N.B.H.S. The Collaborative has been incorporated as part of the high school's curriculum in order to strengthen ties with the youth community and local law enforcement, as well as encourage an open dialogue regarding issues affecting the New Brunswick community. You can find the video published below:
Milena A. Wilson, Esq., Lecturer with the Program in Criminal Justice, published an article with New Jersey Law Journal on December 5, 2016 that transpired from discussions with her students in her course, Criminal Justice Seminar: Crimmigration. The article can be found here: Milena Wilson Article
Rutgers, Verizon Team Up to Provide Lifeline for Domestic Abuse Survivors – and Boon for Environment
"When is a cell phone more than a cell phone? When it enables a survivor of domestic or dating abuse to reclaim her life.
Close to 2,000 refurbished cell phones are in the hands of formerly vulnerable women and men thanks to a partnership launched in 2008 between Rutgers and Verizon Wireless.
The used phones, dropped off in bins placed strategically on the university’s major campuses in New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, have been wiped free of existing numbers and loaded with 3,000 minutes of nationwide calling or texting.
At this year’s commencement ceremony, 32 Criminal Justice graduates received the prestigious Albert Roberts Scholar Award. Each year this award is given to graduates who have demonstrated uncommon achievement in the Criminal Justice major. Students who receive this award must complete a minimum GPA of 3.8 in the major. This award remembers longtime faculty member Al Roberts, a scholar of victimology and social work, who had exemplary commitment to undergraduate education.
Read more: Commencement 2014: 32 C.J. Graduates Receive Prestigious Albert Roberts Scholar Award
Justice In Action: an Evening with Angela Davis and Lennox Hinds was held on Wednesday, October 5th, 2016. Angela Davis delivered a lectured titled "Radicial Visions of Justice", and Lennox Hinds delivered a lecture titled "Reflections of a People's Lawyer".
Read more: Justice in Action with Angela Davis and Lennox Hinds
Lisa Miller, Professor with Criminal Justice and Political Science, published an Op-Ed article with The New York Times on August 5, 2016. The article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/opinion/black-activists-dont-ignore-crime.html?_r=2
Amanda Agan, Assistant Professor with Criminal Justice and Economics, participated in an NPR podcast on July 19, 2016 with NPR host Shankar Vedantam. The audio of the podcast, as well as a corresponding article, can be found here: http://www.npr.org/2016/07/19/486571633/are-ban-the-box-laws-helping-job-applicants-with-criminal-histories
Photo: Courtesy of Jane Siegel Jane Siegel
"John was 15 when Rutgers academic Jane Siegel encountered him for the first time. His mother was in prison – a chronic thief and drug addict, she had been arrested 31 times and convicted 15 times.
Ten years later, John’s own rap sheet included eight arrests and two convictions. He’d held a series of dead-end jobs and saw little hope of anything better. He was chronically depressed.
Read more: Children Are Collateral Victims When Mom Serves Time, Rutgers Academic Finds
Credit: Rutgers Today
Laura Cohen, Director of the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic
“Solitary confinement for incarcerated juveniles has been condemned by psychologists, federal agencies and the United Nations for hindering rehabilitation efforts and damaging children’s mental health.
Yet according to a Rutgers juvenile justice advocate, many of the 300 juveniles who are incarcerated daily in secure facilities in New Jersey have been punished with solitary confinement for several consecutive days.
"Kimberlee Sue Moran is no ordinary geek. As Geekadelphia’s Scientist of the Year, her crowning achievement was blowing up a bus filled with dead animals to help first responders learn how to identify bombing victims.
“They got an understanding of debris patterns and developed a protocol where they could reconstruct what happened and recover both biological and non-biological evidence,’’ explains Moran, a Rutgers-Camden forensic archaeology professor and grant facilitator.
- Commencement 2013: 37 C.J. Graduates Receive Prestigious Albert Roberts Scholar Award
- Rutgers-Led Group Recommends Best Practice Guidelines for Halfway Houses in New Report
- Workshop Paper Presented at Yale University
- Committee on Law and Justice Presents "The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences"