The Reducing Crime podcast
With over 200,000 downloads and plays, this monthly podcast features conversations with influential thinkers in the police service and leading crime and policing researchers working to advance public safety. Often amusing, often enlightening, always informative. Host Professor Jerry Ratcliffe chats to a range of international guests covering policing, crime prevention, practical criminology, and public safety policy.
The podcast is available directly from SoundCloud or Apple podcasts, where you can also subscribe to get access to new podcasts when they become available. You can also find the podcast in most dedicated podcast outlets, such as Stitcher, Spotify, and Google podcasts. Follow @_reducingcrime on twitter for updates on the latest episodes and news.
Also, if you are an instructor or lecturer then send a DM on twitter to @Jerry_Ratcliffe with your work/university email address for a free spreadsheet with multiple choice questions for every podcast episode. Each episode also has transcripts (see below).
More episodes: 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-current
#69: Alex Piquero
Alex Piquero, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Miami, discusses his career in criminology, including his time as the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. He talks about the importance of mentors, the role of universities in challenging and provoking ideas, and the need for academics to engage in public intellectualism. Piquero also discusses challenges he faced in government and the risks around evidence-based advocacy. He concludes with excellent advice for new scholars.
Alex Piquero is an internationally recognized quantitative criminologist with a prolific publishing rate. He has authored more than 500 articles and several books, examining criminal careers, criminal justice policy, crime prevention, and the intersection of race/ethnicity and crime. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
In 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.
You can learn more about Alex's scholarship through his Google Scholar page.
#68: Jim Rose
Jerry chats with his mate Jim Rose, the real-life white cop from the movie BlacKkKlansman. Jim is a former narcotics officer and current senior advisor to the US State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He discusses his experience infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan as a young narc officer and his subsequent work in Central America. He also talks about why proactive leadership and institutionalizing best practices can help implement intelligence-led policing and community-oriented strategies in countries like El Salvador.
While Jim Rose’s law enforcement journey started in Colorado, in the Colorado Springs police department, the majority of his career was spent with the DEA – the Drug Enforcement Administration – in Central and South America. He now serves as a Senior Advisor to INL, which is the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). He is the Regional Gang Advisor for Central America, based at the US Embassy in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
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The iconic photograph of Rose with David Duke is available, under the following conditions. You can only use the photograph for non-commercial purposes, and must attribute the Reducing Crime podcast. If you agree, click here.
#67: Beatriz Magaloni
Beatriz Magaloni is a professor of international relations and political science at Stanford University. She discusses her work on community policing with a specific ‘pacifying police unit’ in Brazil's most dangerous favelas, focusing on the different types of control exerted by criminal organizations in these areas. She also explains the challenges faced by police in these environments and the importance of understanding the relationships between criminal groups, the community, and collusion with the state … and the police.
Professor Magaloni is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman-Spowgli Institute for International Studies at Standford University. Her work focuses on state repression, police, human rights, and violence. She also founded the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab within Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Beatriz has spent years studying poverty, government, policing and community relations in central and South America, and in particular Mexico and Brazil. She has a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Duke University.
The paper referred to in the podcast episode, is available here, and published in the American Political Science Review, volume 114, issue 2.
#66: David Weisburd
David Weisburd is a Distinguished Professor at George Mason University and the Executive Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. He is also the Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Law and Criminal Justice at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law in Jerusalem. He is also the Chief Science Adviser to the National Policing Institute. We discuss the evolution of his career, hotspots policing, procedural justice, and his advice for new scholars.
David Weisburd is one of the most famous criminologists in the world, and an expert in the geography of crime, police innovation, and experimental criminology. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, he was the Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Proactive Policing, and he was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2010. He has also won the Jerry Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement in Experimental Criminology, the Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology for "outstanding contributions to the discipline of criminology", and in 2015 was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize.
#65: Martin Bouchard
Martin Bouchard is a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University. His work focuses on the social organization of illicit markets, as well as the role of social networks in a variety of criminal enterprises. In this episode, he talks about the application of social network analysis to understanding gangs and organized crime groups, concepts of social network analysis, including dyads and brokers, and discusses how police can use this understanding to strategically target and disrupt criminal activity.
At Simon Fraser University, Martin leads the Crime and Illicit Networks Lab. He has published extensively in the area of social organization of illicit markets, as well as the role of social networks in a variety of criminal enterprises. This includes understanding gang violence, and the effect of gang affiliation on individuals getting into, and out of, criminal lifestyles. He received his PhD in 2006 from the Université de Montréal, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Maryland. He has worked with numerous governmental and law enforcement agencies in Canada and on Canadian organized crime groups, and in 2019 he received the Western Society of Criminology Fellows Award for individuals who have made important contributions to the field of criminology.
#64: Dave Cowan
Detective Superintendent Dave Cowan of Australia's Victoria Police talks about his journey into evidence-based policing (EBP) and his experiments, such as a focused deterrence trial and a trial using behavioral science during COVID. He also discusses the importance of better communication and application of research in policing, and the challenges and progress in implementing EBP within policing. He emphasizes the importance of leadership, curiosity, and innovation in driving change.
Detective Superintendent Dave Cowan is the commanding officer of the Organized Crime Division for Australia’s Victoria Police.
He has a Masters in Applied Criminology from Cambridge University, has completed the Senior Executives Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of government, and has been the President of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Evidence-Based Policing since 2019. Dave is also this year’s recipient of the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Gold award for Crime and Violence Prevention.
In the episode, Dave discusses Operation Capesso. Here is a link to further information on that innovative approach to focused deterrence.
#63: Seth Williams
Seth Williams was a groundbreaking Philadelphia District Attorney and the first Black District Attorney in the State of Pennsylvania. He attended West Point, transferred to, and graduated from Penn State University, and Georgetown Law School, was a major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the US Army, and in November 2009 with more than 75% of the vote, was elected District Attorney in Philadelphia. He was on track for a third term, when in 2017 he was convicted in federal court on a charge related to the receipt of undisclosed gifts. We talk about his incarceration, and the role of the District Attorney.
Seth attended West Point, transferred to, and graduated from Penn State University, and Georgetown Law School, was a major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the US Army, and in November 2009 was elected District Attorney in Philadelphia, becoming the first black District Attorney in the state of Pennsylvania.
He initiated a number of high-profile prosecutions but in 2017 the FBI announced a 23-count indictment charging him with bribery, extortion, and wire fraud in connection with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of concealed bribes and undisclosed gifts while as district attorney. In a plea deal, he subsequently pleaded guilty to one charge. He was sentenced to 5 years, ultimately serving 34 months in federal prison.
Link: Implementation guide to the Philadelphia pilot geographic prosecution model.
#62: Ron Clarke
Ron Clarke is a criminological legend, the originator of the situational approach to preventing crime, and he co-developed the rational choice perspective with Derek Cornish. He led the UK Home Office Research and Planning Unit before going on to spend a long and storied academic career at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Ron is the founding editor of Crime Prevention Studies and authored or co-authored more than 300 books, monographs and papers. A critic of mainstream criminology, he nonetheless was awarded the prestigious Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2015.
Before moving to the US in 1984, Ron spent a decade and a half in British government’s criminological research department, the Home Office Research and Planning Unit, rising to position of Director in 1982. Clarke is best known for his development of the theory and application of situational crime prevention, although he also played a major part in the establishment of the British Crime Survey. He was among the first to realize that the secret to crime prevention wasn’t often-unrealistic broad societal changes but the careful and detailed analysis of the micro-environments associated with crime, followed with targeted interventions.
Note: Here is a link to the Jerry Lee lecture I mention in the introduction.
#61: Terry Cherry
Terry Cherry is a recruiting officer with the Charleston (South Carolina) police department, NIJ LEADS scholar, and has been recognized as an IACP 40 under 40 up-and-coming leader in policing. In her 11 years with the Charleston department she has also worked patrol, investigations, and started a problem-solving unit. Working with academic colleagues she has taken a more evidence-based approach to her recruitment work and we discuss solutions to the current crisis facing police recruitment and retention.
Terry has 11 years with the Charleston, South Carolina police department and has served in patrol, investigations and problem solving. She now works in their recruiting team. Terry has been published in the academic journal Police Practice and Research, Police Chief magazine, and she featured in a recent article in The Atlantic.
She is a National Institute of Justice LEADS scholar, was a 2020 IACP 40 Under 40 up-and-coming leader, and was awarded the 2021 Ina Mae “Tiny” Miller Award from NAWLEE, the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives. she has worked with scholars such as Geoff Alpert, Kyle MacLean, and Jeremy Wilson.
The Jerry Lee lecture I mention at the beginning can be seen at this link.
More episodes: 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-current