“I was a child abuser!”: What we read when we read about child abuse

This article, by NCRJ director Emily Horowitz, addresses the past few decades of mass media coverage of crimes against children and the new laws, including the explosion of sex offender laws, aimed at protecting them, by placing rampant media coverage …

The DSM-5 and its Role in Social Work Assessment and Research

An editorial by NCRJ Advisor Dr. Susan Robbins. Dr, Robbins reviews the history of the DSM as psychiatry evolved from being psychoanalytically based towards a biomedical model. Robbins says “Each DSM revision attempted to add a patina of scientific discovery, …

This American Life — The Struggles of Young Pedophiles

NPR’s “This American Life” airs an intelligent and compassionate story about a young pedophile who has never offended and is helping other young pedophiles not to offend.

This story was suggested to Luke Malone by NCRJ Board Member Debbie Nathan.…

Will New York follow Texas in reforming criminal trial rules?

City Limits reports on pressure in New York State to catch up with, yes, Texas, in preventing or remedying wrongful convictions. New York reformers want the state to broaden its very narrow requirements of the kinds of exculpatory evidence the …

New exonerations report: Child sex abuse is different

The new report from the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University law schools, contains some interesting data about exonerations for alleged child sexual abuse, many of which never occurred.…

New York Times revisits McMartin daycare trials

It has long been said, in varying language, that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. You do not have to reach back 200 years to Scotland to find enduring wisdom in …

Evidence of Concealed Jailhouse Deal Raises Questions About a Texas Execution

Mike Graczyk/Associated Press

The New York Times on the Todd Willingham case.

Mr. Scheck said that the Willingham case suggested a fundamental weakness in the justice system: If Mr. Webb’s testimony “was really based on a deal and misrepresentation, then …

Woody Allen Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt

JoAnn Wypijewski in The Nation

“Trampling on an accused priest’s due process rights doesn’t matter to a lot of people, even civil libertarians. Ordinarily, an overgrown gossip column with pretensions wouldn’t matter either, except that this one, “Mia’s Story,” was …

Woody Allen and the Virtual Lynch Mob…

By Mark Godsey

Director, Center for the Global Study of Wrongful Conviction;
Director, Rosenthal Institute for Justice/Ohio Innocence Project

http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/02/13/woody-allen-and-the-virtual-lynch-mob/…

Our misguided child porn laws do little to protect children

(AP Photo/WJLA-TV)

n fact, it is not clear why mere possession of child pornography should ever be grounds for locking people in cages. The Supreme Court’s main rationale for upholding the ban on possession was that demand for this material …