Reducing Crime

Scott Charles is the Trauma Outreach Manager for Temple University Hospital, director of the Cradle to Grave program, and coordinator of the hospital’s Trauma Victims Support Advocates program. We discuss how he came to be running these hospital-based violence interruption programs (HVIPs), how they work to change the lives of gunshot victims and young people at risk of gun crime, and what he has learned from thousands of conversations with gunshot survivors.

Dr. Jason Roach is a chartered psychologist, Professor of Psychology and Policing, and Director of the University of Huddersfield's Secure Societies Research Institute. In the podcast, we talk about some of his projects that have explored offender self-selection and trigger crimes, criminal decision-making, nudging and influencing crime prevention, and learning from offenders.

Walter Katz, Vice President of Criminal Justice for Arnold Ventures, discusses police oversight, public safety budgets, and minimizing police involved shootings. The podcast also explores the effectiveness of social workers vs police officers, the emotional toll of the criminal justice system, challenges in reducing police-involved shootings, determining consequences for mistakes in public policy, and rethinking police response to mental health problems.

Dr. Justin Nix is a distinguished associate professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and this year's Outstanding Young Experimental Criminologist. We chat about his research on procedural justice, police legitimacy, and the use of deadly force.

Charles Ramsey is one of the most revered leaders in American policing. He joined the Chicago Police Department as a cadet in 1968 and rose to lead both the Washington DC Metro police department and the Philadelphia Police Department. He co-chaired President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The discussion covers 1960s racism in policing, recruitment, leadership, dealing with bad news, working with academics, compassion fatigue, identifying and promoting talent in the department, and mental health of police leadership when facing deaths in the ranks.

Don Weatherburn is now a Professor at Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, but for most of his career ran the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney. There he played a pivotal role informing crime and policing policy at the highest levels of government. We talk about his experience and insights working with practitioners in such a high profile public capacity. He is on twitter @DonWeatherburn

Natalie Hiltz is an inspector with Peel Regional Police Service in Ontario Canada and an advocate for evidence-based policing across the country. Inspector Hiltz was instrumental in organizing the first Evidence-Based Policing Conference in Canada in partnership with the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and The Cambridge Centre for Evidence Based Policing. We talk about the emergence of evidence-based policing in Canada and her research into the overlap of violent crime offenders and victims in her community.

Dr Ian Stanier was the head of the human intelligence unit at the UK’s National Counter-Terrorism Policing Headquarters. He is now an academic involved in research and training on the recruitment, management and elicitation of information from covert human intelligence sources. We chat about the challenges of informant recruitment and management during the pandemic, and the different motivations that drive source recruitment.

Bill Bratton has been chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, chief of the New York City Transit Police, commissioner of the Boston Police Department, and New York City Police Department commissioner twice. For the last twenty-five years, he has been one of the most high profile police leaders in America. We talk about his career and his new book (written with Peter Knobler) "The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America"

Katy Barrow-Grint is a Superintendent with the UK's Thames Valley Police. She is currently the Head of Specialist Operations for Thames Valley, running covert policing for the force. We talk about her research on domestic abuse, her work developing an internal evidence-based policing journal, becoming the inaugural Editor in Chief of the College of Policing Publication ‘Going Equipped’, and being a lead on #WeCops, a popular UK policing weekly twitter debate forum.