Roundtable: Achieving Social Justice Beyond the Classroom: A Collaboration between Arcadia University and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This panel discussion contributes to criminology and criminal justice pedagogy by discussing a collaboration between the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and Arcadia University. This collaboration serves the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, which seeks to assist wrongly convicted individuals and to educate the public on the causes of wrongful convictions, by providing research they need for individual cases, political lobbying, and other aspects of their work. The collaboration serves college and university students by offering research internships that can be embedded in courses or serve as the focus of independent studies for advanced students. To date, the research undertaken by Arcadia University students and faculty has ranged from reviewing forensic material in a pending case to researching the policies of local police departments on videotaping custodial interrogations to interviewing exonerees on their post-exoneration experiences. This panel discussion will include faculty and students from Arcadia University who have participated in this research, as well as representatives of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Also discussed will be the development of the Pennsylvania Student Innocence Network to expand this collaboration to other Pennsylvania colleges and universities.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Chair

• John Noakes, Arcadia University

Discussants

• Marissa Bluestine, Legal Director, Pennsylvania Innocence Project

• Favian Guertin-Martin, Arcadia University

• Karen Scott, Arcadia University

• Andrew Danyew, Arcadia University

• Sabrina Forte, Arcadia University

• Nicole Gambardello, Arcadia University

• Stephanie Oddi, Arcadia University