Headline: Cincinnati Law Professor Janet Moore Awarded $75K Research Project Grant

Deck: Professor Janet Moore to conduct research project examining ways to reduce the
involvement of impoverished people and people of color in Ohios carceral system.
Cincinnati, OH -- Cincinnati Laws Professor Janet Moore has just been awarded a $75,000
grant from the Ohio Transformation Fund (OTF) to support a research project to reduce the
involvement of poor people and people of color in Ohios carceral system. The focus of this
project fits perfectly with Professor Moores interests in criminal and indigent defense.
The OTFs goal is to impact policy reform across Ohio by engaging communities; the group is
starting with focus on the criminal justice system. Moore, who is also a capital defense attorney,
shares that the project comprises a complex, three-pronged plan, with a myriad of moving parts.
Grassroots based, it will involve using community-based participatory research to redefine what
communities consider to be genuine public safety, as well as identify priority policies to achieve
equal access to that redefined safety.
The first step, Professor Moore says, is getting the communities to buy in to the concept of
creating their own definition of public safety. The hypothesis will examine whether communities
come up with a public safety definition different from the traditionalist stance, which is the the
four Ps: policing, prosecution, prisons, probation/parole. Perhaps their definition will shift
towards something that is even broader -- the fifth and sixth P -- public health and ground-up
prevention.
But starting the conversation is only the first step.
Once information is gathered, Professor Moore hopes to use asset-based community strategies
to grow that communitys leadership capacity. Strong leadership will help drive change in the
community, and lead to greater buy-in from the community.
The third prong is largely drive by the communitys demand, she said. The goal is to develop
both key performance indicators -- data points that you would want to collect and assess in
order to evaluate your progress towards those new policy objectives.
Out of the third prong come two overarching goals: 1) creating an overall strategy for
approaching this problem; and 2) creating a type of web-based technology system that will
provide the community access to information for monitoring systems and policies. This
information will be based off of indicators selected by the community. Professor Moore wants
the system to be more transparent than it is now, but views the web-based access as a next
generation goal.
Her vision for this project is not a narrow one, and it doesnt stop the day the grant runs out. In
fact, she hopes that in the projects future, findings will be useable across Ohio -- and maybe

even further. While the specifics would vary from community to community, there would be a
basic model of practice that works.
Moore explains that part of the reason this issue is so important to her is because of what she
saw working with clients on death row as a capital defense attorney in North Carolina. Although
she dealt with some of the worst crimes, it struck her that there were many opportunities where
someone could have intervened in the life of her clients but didnt.
What makes me crazy about these policies, she stated, is we constantly ignore data-driven,
data-based best practices, not only to the extreme harm of lots of folks, including my clients
victims and their families and communities, but at ridiculous cost.
Professor Moore will be working on the OTF project with community activist Iris Roley, project
manager for Black United Front; Reverend Damon Lynch III, pastor of New Prospect Baptist
Church and a Black United Front member; and Dr. Jacinda Dariotis, Associate Research
Professor and Director of Evaluation Services Center at the University of Cincinnati.
Author: Michelle Flanagan, 18, Communication Intern