Ben Kempinen directs the Prosecution Project which places second-year law students in district attorney offices throughout the state. Twenty-two students were placed in 17 district attorney offices in summer 2000. Peter DeWind is the Restorative Justice Project's director. Restorative justice seeks to bring crime victims together with the people convicted or accused of perpetrating the crimes against them. In many cases, crime victims are able to resolve their misgivings about the criminal justice system and come to terms with their victimization by talking with the offenders who victimized them.
Offenders can also advance their rehabilitation by hearing directly from their victims.
These contacts can sometimes facilitate restitution as well. Martha Gaines directs a new Remington Center project called the Patient Advocacy and Research Center. The center will combine the labor and talents of students and faculty from the schools of law, medicine, nursing, social work and pharmacy to build a multidisciplinary center providing patient advocacy services for cancer patients and their families. Here, law students work with incarcerated persons who are appealing their criminal convictions. Students learn skills and ethics and perform an important function in the criminal justice system by helping to ensure its fairness.