Anastasia Petropoulos Capstone

Through 2016 into 2017 I studied the responsibilities of a Mitigation Specialist. Mitigation is a practice in the field of criminal justice which consists of heavy research within cases concerning defendants involved in crimes strongly concentrated on homicide. Mitigation specialists investigate and collect all records and contacts documented throughout their client’s life in order to compile a timeline of the information. Mitigation can be very valuable in regards to the sentencing of a defendant. I became interested in this topic through my kickboxing teacher, Erin, who went to school for psychology and is currently working with a non-profit organization called YSRP, Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, to mitigate the cases of juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania. After agreeing to be my mentor, Erin provided me with various sources including redacted files of pre sentencing social history’s, a mitigation workbook, and a two-day Mitigation Training Series in Baltimore. These sources gave me insight to the type of information I would be gathering and the tools to use during my investigations. The climax of my research were the two juvenile lifer resentencing trials I attended with Erin. They were very emotional days, however I learned that without the help of mitigation these men might have never been given a second chance at life outside of prison. Throughout my delve into the field of mitigation I have composed a file of all of the notes and documents that are crucial to the profession, which you can view with the link below. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-ai82yIYwRDZDN4TTVhYlJzWTg?usp=sharing This capstone has aided me in the decision to pursue this field professionally at John Jay College of Criminal Justice! Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1XPOI6SR9eveFWYYtMI1WkETFut9-f0tH-0URo-bICzQ/edit?usp=sharing