Graduate Center Faculty Experts in Criminal Justice, Police Policies and Racism Available for Media Interviews

Media contact:  Tanya Domi, 212-817-7283, tdomi@gc.cuny.edu

Graduate Center Faculty Experts in Criminal Justice, Police Policies and Racism Available for Media Interviews

NEW YORK, July 1, 2015 -- Faculty experts at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, are available for media interviews on queries relating to criminal justice, police practices and policies and racist institutional structures in America and globally. There are the following:

Candace McCoy is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a criminal justice generalist, specializes in the study of criminal justice policies. She has published on such topics as sentencing, plea bargaining, jury decision making, police practices, and drug courts. She has also taught in the field of criminal justice ethics. Recent publications include reviews and commentary about drug courts, a coauthored article on bail reform published in Punishment and Society, the chapter on 'Prosecution' in the Oxford Handbook of Criminal Justice (2011), and the edited book 'Holding Police Accountable' (2010). With Jerome Skolnick and Malcolm Feeley, she coedited the textbook Criminal Justice: Cases and Materials, 6th ed. (2004).
The Hill.com, 5.11.15
Opinion-editorial by Candace McCoy, a professor of criminal justice at the Graduate Center and John Jay College, City University of New York.
Email address: CMcCoy@gc.cuny.edu

Brett Stoudt is an assistant professor in Psychology, as well as the Environmental Psychology Doctoral Program at the Graduate Center with a joint appointment in the Gender Studies Program the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is also the associate director of the Public Science Project at the Graduate Center. He has worked on numerous participatory action research projects with community groups, lawyers, and policy-makers nationally and internationally. His interests include the social psychology of privilege and oppression as well as aggressive and discriminatory policing practices.
Foot Patrol:  A Catch-22 of Community Policy
Newsweek, 5.17.15
Email address: brett.stoudt@gmail.com

Maria Elena Torre is a research scientist and faculty member in Critical Social-Personality Psychology at the Graduate Center and the Director and co-founder of the Public Science Project. For the last 15 years she has been engaged in critical participatory action research projects nationally and internationally with schools, prisons, and community-based organizations seeking to further social justice. Her work introduced the concept of 'participatory contact zones' to collaborative research, and she continues to be interested in how democratic methodologies, radical inclusion, and notions of solidarity impact scientific inquiry.
Stopping Stop and Frisk, the APA Monitor, February 2015.
Email address: mtorre@gmail.com

Vilna Bashi Treitler is a Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center and Professor of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College, CUNY. She creates and teaches scholarship that theorizes about the dynamics of hierarchical socioeconomic structures, particularly as groups are incorporated into local and global stratification systems like the economic and political divisions between First-" and "Third-World" nations, labor markets or racial structures. She has also earned distinctions for expertise in qualitative research methods. She is the author of The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions (Stanford, 2013) and Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World (Stanford, 2007). She is also a member of the NGO Sub-Committee for the Elimination of Racism at the United Nations.
Email address: VTreitler@gc.cuny.edu

About the Graduate Center
The Graduate Center's (GC) mission is to prepare the next generation of scholars for careers in the academy, cultural institutions, and public service, to carry out advanced research and scholarship, and to increase public understanding of pressing matters of local and global significance. Approximately 4,500 students are enrolled in forty doctoral and master's programs, sustained by a wide range of financial support. Recognized for its scholarly leadership across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, the GC is also a platform for influential public intellectuals, who, through the GC's public programs, inform and enliven debate, and enrich the cultural life of New York City.