Texas Southern University in Houston received $2.7 million from the Center for Advancing Opportunity to start the school’s new Center for Justice Research.
Based in Washington, D.C., the Center for Advancing Opportunity was created through a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation and Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries. The research and education initiative primarily focuses on education, criminal justice and entrepreneurship.
The new Center for Justice Reform will seek to produce solutions to understand and address the U.S. criminal justice system’s current challenges, according to a Jan. 22 press release from TSU.
“CJR’s mission is to change the paradigm of how historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) address criminal justice reform by developing objective, evidence-based research,” TSU said in the release. “The goal is to develop and disseminate interdisciplinary criminal justice research to dismantle barriers faced by American citizens in fragile communities. The center will be an incubator for policy-driven criminal justice research support, increase the research capacity of HBCU faculty in the field, and train and mentor graduate students interested in addressing issues surrounding mass incarceration.”
The center’s director will be Howard Henderson, also a professor of administration of justice at TSU’s Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs.
“The Center for Justice Research represents a new direction for Texas Southern and will strengthen our commitment to equal justice for all citizens,” TSU President Austin Lane said in the release.
Source: Houston Business Journal
