Center for Policy and Research

The Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University School of Law is a research organization that analyzes national policies and practices. Law students, participating in the Center as Research Fellows, work to identify factual patterns and inconsistencies in areas that help shape the law and public policy.

Under the direction of Professor Mark Denbeaux, the Center’s work focuses on three key areas: Interrogations & Intelligence, National Security, and Forensics. Among the Center’s high-profile projects are the Guantánamo Reports.

The Reports have been developed by analyzing the government’s own data through the systematic review of more than 100,000 pages of government documents procured through the Freedom of Information Act. The Guantánamo Reports, which totaled 15 by December 2009, have been widely cited, published, and reported throughout the world, including by both houses of the United States Congress.

The Center has released numerous reports analyzing aspects of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and its operation, the characteristics of the detainees, and the camp's role in national security policy. The Center has issued reports regarding how the detainees were initially collected, weight data of the detainees, the recidivism rates of released prisoners, the incidents surrounding an alleged triple suicide at the camp in June 2006, detainee interrogation methods, and other issues. The various Guantánamo reports have been cited by various media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Slate.com, the Huffington Post, CBS, MSNBC, and Fox News.

The Center documented that an estimated 80% of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp had not been captured in military action, as claimed by the Bush administration, but had been transferred to US forces by Afghan and Pakistani forces to receive bounty payments. Many of the detainees had been missionaries or charitable workers.

In 2009, the Center issued a report, Death in Camp Delta, which analyzed the NCIS investigation report, published in 2008, of the deaths of three detainees in Guantánamo Bay on June 10, 2006, which were reported as suicides. According to the Center report, the June 2006 deaths raised serious questions about the security of the Camp, the duties of officials of the multiple defense and intelligence agencies that allowed three detainees to die, and the quality of the investigation into the cause of the deaths.

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