Friday, March 1, 2013

Shaken-baby syndrome: Very little is known nationally about what has become a major U.S. criminal justice issue, the Medill Justice Project says; Post describes the Project's efforts to create a national database.


POST: "Methodology:  How the Medill Justice Project is creating a U.S. database on shaken-baby syndrome" National criminal-justice experts weigh in on research approach," by Alison Flowers, published  by the Project on February 15, 2013.

GIST: "Scores of mothers, fathers, day care workers and other caregivers throughout the United States have been accused of violently shaking children, inflicting head injuries known as shaken-baby syndrome. But little else is known nationally about what has become a major criminal-justice issue.........The lack of data speaks to a prosecution paradigm in U.S. shaken-baby syndrome cases that has emerged with little notice, according to Deborah Tuerkheimer, a professor of law at DePaul University in Chicago who has written about shaken-baby syndrome and the courts.
“These cases have been prosecuted without a systematic effort to gather the data,” said Tuerkheimer. “It’s just not been out there in any way that’s accessible.”.........Northwestern Professor Alec Klein, director of The Medill Justice Project, said the plan is to not include individual defendant names in the database; the goal is to identify national patterns and trends, such as the extent to which men and women are accused of such crimes, to better understand the forces shaping prosecutions."

The entire post can be found at:

http://www.medilljusticeproject.org/2013/02/15/methodology/

 PUBLISHER'S NOTE

I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:

http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html

Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.