In 2023–2025, campus directors are supporting a number of intellectual and institutional research projects designed to document work on criminal justice issues, and address the challenges that trauma poses for incarcerated young adults.
"Exit 9: Free Tyree" aims to create a pilot episode of a docuseries on racial justice issues. The pilot tells the story of Tyree Wallace, a wrongfully incarcerated prisoner serving life for a murder he didn't commit and the Rutgers students and professor who are helped fight to gain his freedom. Led by John Hulme, Instructor/Creator of "Exit 9", Writers House, Department of English, Rutgers-New Brunswick.
Prisons are monuments to trauma and public school programming for young adults 21 and under who have not graduated from high school is especially challenging. The Initiative for Education and Justice at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the NJ Department of Corrections seek to create a year-long working group to address the challenges that trauma poses for incarcerated young adults and their instructors. Led by Benjamin Justice (Rutgers Graduate School of Education)
This project involves conducting oral history interviews with leaders from New Jersey Together to document their work on criminal justice during the COVID–19 pandemic. The organization worked to pressure public officials to provide early release to incarcerated people. It also urged correctional facilities to provide medical treatment, masks and other mitigation measures for those incarcerated during the pandemic. Led by Jyl Josephson (Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark)