Bureau of Justice and Statistics
- BJS mission:
- To collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. These data are critical to federal, state, and local policymakers in combating crime and ensuring that justice is both efficient and evenhanded.
“Founded in 1986, The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.”
Peter Wagner co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 to document and publicize how mass incarceration punishes our entire society. Through groundbreaking research, innovative media work, and cross-sector organizing, our staff members shape national reform campaigns from our office in Western Massachusetts.
“The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) promotes the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses: individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law. The abiding principles are reflected in the vision of the Constitution’s framers and the wisdom of forward-looking leaders who have shaped our law throughout American history. As a result of their efforts, the Constitution has retained its authority and relevance for each new generation.”
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry c. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, more than 300 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 20 who served time on death row. The Innocence Project was involved in 177 of the DNA exonerations. Others were helped by Innocence Network organizations, private attorneys and by pro se defendants in a few instances.
The Innocence Project’s full-time staff attorneys and cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.
Welcome to the Veritas Initiative website. Launched in the fall of 2010 with the release of the most comprehensive statewide study ever undertaken on prosecutorial misconduct in both state and federal courts. The Veritas Initiative is dedicated to advancing the integrity of our justice system by researching and providing critical data that shines a light on such crucial issues as the aforementioned misconduct of public prosecutors.