Social change and legal reform, legal process and decision-making, public opinion, wrongful convictions, criminal admissions
Dr. Norris's research interests revolve around change - how reform happens and how it is shaped by social, cultural, political, and legal factors. Much of his work focuses specifically on wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice. He has published numerous books, articles, and chapters on innocence-related policy reforms, the development of the innocence advocacy movement, and the theoretical and methodological development of wrongful conviction research. He also studies criminal admissions (interrogations, confessions, and plea bargaining), the death penalty, and other social justice issues. Dr. Norris's current research projects include a series of experimental studies on public attitudes toward the justice system, a study of state-level innocence policies, an analysis of historical and contemporary attempts to estimate the rate of wrongful convictions, and a qualitative-historical analysis of anti-death penalty advocacy in the last two decades.
Norris, Robert J. and Kevin J. Mullinix. (2019). Framing innocence: An experimental test of the effects of wrongful convictions on public opinion. Journal of Experimental Criminology. Online first publication.
Mullinix, Kevin J. and Robert J. Norris. (2018) Pulled-over rates, causal attributions, and trust in police. Political Research Quarterly. Online first publication.
Norris, Robert J., Catherine L. Bonventre, and James R. Acker. (2018). When Justice Fails: Causes and Consequences of Wrongful Convictions. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Redlich, Allison D., Shi Yan, Robert J. Norris, and Shawn D. Bushway. (2018). The influence of confessions on guilty pleas and plea discounts. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 24: 147-157.
Norris, Robert J. (2017). Exonerated: A History of the Innocence Movement. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Norris, Robert J. and Catherine L. Bonventre. (2015). Advancing wrongful conviction scholarship: Towards new conceptual frameworks. Justice Quarterly 32: 929-49.
CRIM 100: Introduction to Criminal Justice
CRIM 424: Constitutional Law: Criminal Process and Rights
CRIM 490: Wrongful Convictions
CRIM 595-795: Learning from Errors in the Justice System
Ph.D., School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (2015)
M.A., School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (2011)
B.A., Sociology, UNC-Greensboro (2009)