The Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy is funding investigative journalism. Well, hurrah for them! It used to be that news organizations performed this critical role, but even with 24 hours a day to work with, they've abdicated their responsibilities.
Some of the in-depth reporting that this think tank has done is in themes of interest to the likes of us. A few recent reports:
Keystone Cops at the Police Lab: Compromised crime laboratories are a national scandal that can't be set straight until the labs are independent of law enforcement.
As a Detroiter, I found this report absorbing. The crime lab here was shut down, the county prosecutor remarking that if the public knew what was going on there, we would be outraged....
Why Fewer Murder Cases Get Solved These Days: A new study by three FBI officials suggests that cooperation — whether by witnesses or even other departments — is the key to closing more murder cases; by Lewis Beale.
Re-Mapping Forensic Sciences Future: A critical report from the National Academy of Sciences calls for national standards in forensics science, validation of new technology and crime lab ethics; by Sue Russell.
Bias and the Big Fingerprint Dust-Up: Cognitive neuroscientist Itiel Dror finds that analysis of fingerprint data by human examiners can be ruined by unintentional bias. But he offers some relatively simple fixes that can improve the odds of reliable results.
And a CLEWS milestone, this site has rolled 800,000 hits.
The art above is the cover of True Crime True North: The Golden Age of Canadian Pulp Magazines.
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