Fall Retreat

The Overbrook Foundation is pleased to announce that our Fall Retreat was a success -- largely due to a group of experts who presented at our Environment and Human Rights panels.

Our first round of speakers addressed food and sustainability issues in "'To Eat or Not to Eat:' Surviving in a Post Climate Change World."  The panel featured Martin Goebel of Sustainable Northwest, Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, and Anna Lappe, author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.  Some of the highlights included talks on food migration, waste, climate change, and overfishing.

Our second panel, entitled "Criminal Justice and Human Rights," brought together leaders working at the intersection of those particular fields.  Those experts included Malika Saada Saar of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Margaret Huang of the Rights Working Group.  Most notably, the panel touched upon racial profiling, immigration reform, and the incarceration of women in the U.S.

To see more of their work, please click on the following links:

• "Wade Henderson puts a Black Perspective on Immigration Reform": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR3hbWhFUks&noredirect=1
• Face the Truth: Racial Profiling Across America (a documentary produced by Breakthrough and the Rights Working Group): http://player.vimeo.com/video/15232640
• Rebecca Project on Sex Trafficking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr--N1_5pco
• Fresh Air interview with Paul Greenberg: http://www.npr.org/2010/07/19/128512740/paul-greenberg-the-future-of-wild-fish
• "Making the Hard Journey to Trust" by Martin Goebel: http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/media-room/press-releases/high-desert-museum-honors-j-martin-goebel-with-earle-a-chiles-award
• Anna Lappe discusses Diet for a Hot Planet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pJFLavQH_8

Thank you to all of our panel speakers for sharing their insight and expertise!  Their knowledge continues to inform The Overbrook Foundation's work in both its Environment and Human Rights programs.

Innocence Project Sets the Standard for Conducting Eyewittnes Lineups

A highly-anticipated report released today (and reported on in The New York Times) shows that the Innocence Project’s recommended procedures for conducting eyewitness lineups are more accurate than other methods. The report has significant implications for reducing wrongful convictions within the United States criminal justice system. Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of the 273 convictions overturned through DNA testing.

The report describes field studies conducted by the American Judicature Society, in collaboration with the Police Foundation, the Innocence Project, and the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. The police departments of Austin (TX), Tucson (AZ), San Diego (CA), and Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) all participated in the research, which began in 2008. The officers collected detailed information on lineup procedures and outcomes to determine the most accurate methods.

Analysis of the data showed that double-blind sequential lineups — where the administering officer doesn’t know which person is the suspect, and the witness views one person or photograph at a time — produce fewer mistaken identifications than lineups that present all of the suspects simultaneously. The study also found that sequential lineups resulted in the same number of correct suspect identifications as simultaneous lineups.