Criminal Justice Task Force

Criminal Justice Task Force

Professor Emerita Deborah A. Ramirez founded the Northeastern University School of Law Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF) in the summer of 2020, responding to calls for criminal justice reform by protesters around the world.

Through a framework of subgroups, the Task Force addresses policies and practices within the criminal justice system that disenfranchise the most vulnerable members of our society. The subgroups facilitate communication and collaboration across communities which might not otherwise get the opportunity to work together. With more than 110 members, the Task Force includes representatives from the judicial, legal and public policy communities, law enforcement and academia.

Current Projects

Jails to Jobs Pipeline Project

Stable employment is one of the strongest predictors of successful reentry — it reduces recidivism, restores financial independence and helps justice-impacted individuals rebuild their lives. The Jails to Jobs Pipeline Project (J2J) serves as the academic partner to the Massachusetts Community Justice Support Centers (CJSCs), driving outreach, research and education that connects clients to real job opportunities. J2J focuses on job readiness and employer engagement, expanding both the resources available to clients and the network of employers willing to hire them. That partnership is working: J2J’s outreach support helped grow admissions to the centers by 36 percent from FY24 to FY25.

Initiatives:

• Employer Engagement Training: J2J consultants train CJSC career counselors on how to build relationships with employers and encourage fair chance hiring practices.
• Job Readiness Events: With partners at the New England Culinary Arts Training (NECAT), MassHire BRIDGES, Community Works Services (CWS) and the CJSCs, J2J hosts workshops on navigating the job market with a criminal record. For example, one training involved nearly 20 organizations tabling with job readiness and employment resources. NECAT — which provides culinary training to justice-impacted individuals — catered lunch. All ~125 attendees received a job readiness resource guide and a list of CORI-friendly employers in the Greater Boston area.
• Podcast Series: “On the Record: A Guide to Fair Chance Hiring.” Hosts Nicole Loonstyn and Anabelle Lopez released a four-episode podcast series featuring interviews with stakeholders across the fair chance hiring landscape, including a recently released individual and researchers focused on employer education.
• On-Site Workshops at Suffolk County House of Correction: J2J delivers job readiness workshops directly to incarcerated individuals approaching release.

Roadmap Project

When federal officers break the law, how can state prosecutors hold them accountable for criminal conduct? Since this past spring, a team of law students, led by Professor Emerita Deborah Ramirez, has been building the answer through the Roadmap Project, an initiative of the Criminal Justice Task Force at Northeastern Law’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR). The goal of the Roadmap Project is to help state prosecutors prepare to contest Supremacy Clause immunity — a long-standing doctrine that has governed whether federal officers can stand trial for state criminal charges, and to do so in where state prosecutors rarely find themselves: a federal district court.

To date, the Roadmap Project has trained eight district attorneys representing more than 10 million people across the country and recruited former federal agents ready to consult and testify against the agencies they once worked for, offering prosecutors an inside perspective on federal training and use-of-force practices. “This is a difficult fight, but far from impossible,” said Ramirez, founder and director of the Criminal Justice Task Force. “If district attorneys are prepared, they may be able to overcome immunity, and potentially even get their case remanded to state court for trial.”

Over the course of the project, the team has uncovered a number of doctrinal and practical hurdles presented by Supremacy Clause immunity and by federal officer removal. In a recent opinion piece, “Federal accountability for ICE has vanished. States must fill the void,” published in The Boston Globe, Ramirez and Max Reese, research director of the Roadmap Project, argue that “if the federal government has chosen to shut the door on accountability, the states should open theirs. It is critical that state prosecutors form a strategy to ensure that there are full professional state investigations into all potential misconduct. Governors, attorneys general, local district attorneys and law enforcement must work together to build the institutional infrastructure to make criminal accountability a reality.”

Past Projects

The Insurance Project
This project seeks to use  liability insurance as a way to regulate possession of guns and as a way to improve police accountability.

>> Policing the Police: A Roadmap to Police Accountability Using Professional Liability Insurance
>> Policing the Police: Could Mandatory Professional Liability Insurance for Officers Provide a New Accountability Model

See related article by Professor Deborah Ramirez: “Massachusetts Should Require Gun Liability Insurance,” The Boston Globe (July 29, 2022).

Reentry Research Project
Ignoring the needs of those reentering our communities is undeniably setting them up for failure. Most states have uncoordinated, private or small public reentry networks, lacking continuity and communication. Our communities need public, state-wide, state-funded networks to increase resource accessibility.

>> Read the Criminal Justice Task Force’s proposal for creating change

Rethinking Public Safety Project
To rethink public safety, Professor Deborah Ramirez and the Criminal Justice Task Force propose (1) narrowing the scope of our police forces to respond only to on violent crimes, on-going crimes and serious felonies, (2) creating an unarmed trained civilian public safety team to respond to non-violent crimes, and (3) building police accountability infra-structure and architecture.

>> Read Professor Deborah Ramirez’s proposal for creating change

Historical Narrative Project
The Historical Narrative Project aims to inform community members and stakeholders about the role race has played in the history and economic development of Massachusetts.

>> Boston Narrative: Faneuil Hall: The Monument of Peter Faneuil’s Legacy and a Catalyst for Change