News

The public health effects of laws on drugged driving, bullying, intimate partner violence, HIV decriminalization, and shared laboratory services will be investigated through five new research projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Public Health Law Research (PHLR) program as part of its new Strategic and Targeted Research Program (STRP).

The grants announced today total $586,000 and will support studies representing high priority topics identified through a six-month long open call for ideas. (See description for each of the final studies below.)

Current sanction levels for domestic violence offenses in North Carolina do not reduce repeat offenses, according to a study published in the February 2013 edition of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.

The study, conducted by Frank Sloan, PhD, and his team of researchers at Duke University, examines how domestic violence cases are resolved in North Carolina, and how current ways of resolving these cases impact repeat offenses. The study finds that a repeat offense is the case for many domestic violence charges in North Carolina.

PHLR has a number of resources on the topics of gun violence, mental illness and the law:

A new study shows that New Jersey's law requiring novice drivers to display a red decal on their license plates has prevented more than 1,600 crashes and helped police officers enforce regulations unique to new drivers. The first-in-the-nation decal provision went into effect in May 2010 as part of N.J.'s Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) law.