UIC scholar appointed to NFL violence panel

Beth Richie, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, was named a senior adviser to the NFL’s policy group on domestic violence and sexual assault.

The National Football League appointed a UIC scholar to a panel of experts formed after several NFL players were involved in domestic violence or child abuse incidents.

Beth Richie, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, was named a senior adviser to the league’s policy group on domestic violence and sexual assault. She joins a previously announced group tasked with developing NFL educational and service programs and revising the league’s personal conduct policy.

“The problem of violence, particularly against women and children, can’t simply be addressed by public policies relying on incarceration. So it’s important for organizational and grassroots efforts to take into account the need for education, resources, outreach and social change,” said Richie, professor of African-American studies, criminology, law, and justice, and gender and women’s studies.

“This is a unique moment in our national consciousness as we consider the impact of violence against women and the role of institutions in preventing and responding to it.

“I look forward to working with the distinguished panel and the NFL to address these issues and deliver policies that will have a positive impact on the individuals most affected, the league overall and social institutions more broadly as we strive to enhance public awareness of and response to the problem of violence.”

Richie studies the ways that race or ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African-American battered women and sexual assault survivors.

She is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation. Her first book, Compelled to Crime: the Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, is taught in many college courses and cited in media reports for its positions on race, gender and crime.

Other members of the NFL’s domestic violence expert panel include Lisa Friel, former head of the sex crimes prosecution unit in the New York County District Attorney’s Office; Peter Harvey, board member for Futures Without Violence and former New Jersey attorney general; Tony Porter, co-founder of the violence prevention organization A Call to Men; Jane Randel, co-founder of the anti-violence campaign NO MORE; and Rita Smith, former executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.