The Reducing Crime podcast
With over 250,000 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, and Spotify. 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 @_reducingcrime 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). Quick links and a concise list of episodes are available.
More episodes: 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-80 | 81-current
#87: Jeremy Wilson
Jeremy Wilson is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and the Founding Director of the Police Staffing Observatory at Michigan State University. Before that, he was a Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
We talk police recruitment, what is wrong with so many operational allocation models, and how the world of police staffing is changing.
Dr. Jeremy Wilson is an incredibly productive scholar, having written over 180 publications and attracted more than 15 million dollars of sponsored projects. He serves on the National Policing Institute Board of Directors, the IACP Research Advisory Committee, and the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Criminology. At the RAND Corporation, where he led the development of the Center on Quality Policing and the Police Recruitment and Retention Clearinghouse
He was named a Distinguished Scholar by the American Society of Criminology Division on Policing, and the Police Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences honored him with the prestigious O.W. Wilson Award.
#86: Matt Bland
Matt Bland is the Chief Operating Officer of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and an associate professor with the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge. We talk about his background as police analyst in the UK, working in crime and intelligence roles with Norfolk and Suffock constabularies, the National Intelligence Model, and how to advance evidence-based policing.
Dr. Bland spent a decade and a half with Norfolk and Suffolk Constabularies, in a range of intelligence and crime analyst roles, during which time he studied on the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology's MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management course. Subsequently, he undertook his PhD research at Cambridge and joined the faculty as a full-time lecturer in December 2019. Last year, Matt took up the role of Chief Operating Officer of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing. Armed with his PhD from Cambridge, he has published a slew of academic journal articles, and co-authored three books, and he continues to hold a number of consultation positions across policing.
#85: Nola Joyce
Nola Joyce is a highly accomplished civilian policing professional who has served in leadership roles with the police departments of Chicago, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia where she held the rank of Deputy Commissioner. She is now a Partner and Principal Consultant for 21CP Solutions. Her chat with host Jerry Ratcliffe discusses the role of civilian staff in policing, their mentorship and development, and the support they bring to police leaders. She emphasizes the importance of balancing innovative ideas with relevance and acceptance from frontline officers.
In Chicago, Nola Joyce helped implement the famous CAPS community policing program, and then in Philadelphia, she was instrumental in designing and evaluating key policing initiatives, such as the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment and Philadelphia Policing Tactics Experiment.
Her expertise is widely recognized, as evidenced by her role on the International Association of Police Chiefs (IACP) Research Advisory Committee, the Police Executive Research Forum’s (PERF) Research Council, and as a Senior Executive Fellow of the National Institute of Policing. Joyce received the Gary P. Hayes Award from PERF and the Award of Research Excellence from IACP. She holds degrees in sociology, public policy, and homeland security.
#84: Stacey Rothwell
Stacey Rothwell is the director of innovation action across seven police forces leading ERIN, the Eastern Region Innovation Network in the UK. After a career as a sworn officer, including as a detective in financial investigation, she returned in a civilian role, pioneering the innovative use of rapid video response in domestic violence cases. She chatted to Jerry Ratcliffe at the Somers Town Coffee House to discuss her career and the challenges of getting an experiment in rapid video response up and running.
Stacey Rothwell joined policing as an officer in Kent back in 1998, becoming a detective sergeant specializing in financial investigation. After a brief emigration to Australia, she returned to British policing in a civilian role in innovation and has since progressed to becoming the director of Innovation Action for ERIN.
She has a master's degree in senior police leadership and applied criminology from the University of Cambridge.
Her work has received awards from the American Society of Criminology's division of Experimental Criminology, the UK Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and the government's chief scientific advisor.
#83: David Décary-Hétu
David Décary-Hétu is a professor at the University of Montreal and chair of the Darknet and Anonymity Research Centre. His research - and the chat - focuses on studying data from offenders who use anonymity technologies like the dark web, cryptocurrencies, and encryption. He reveals that the dark web enables new types of crime, but repeated disruptions of dark web markets can lead to some offenders becoming discouraged and quitting.
Prof. David Décary-Hétu has a Ph.D. in criminology from the Université de Montréal (2013). He first started as a Senior Scientist at the School of Criminal Sciences of the Université de Lausanne before moving to his current position as an Associate Professor at the School of Criminology of the Université de Montréal. Prof. Décary-Hétu is the Deputy Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology (ICCC), the Chair of the Division of Cybercrime of the American Society of Criminology and the Chair of the Darknet and Anonymity Research Centre. Prof. Décary-Hétu studies how offenders adopt and use technologies, and how that shapes the regulation of offenses, as well as how researchers can study offenders and offenses.
#82: Loren Atherley
Loren Atherley, PhD is the Senior Director of Performance Analytics & Research and the Senior Research Scientist for the Seattle Police Department. He emphasizes the importance of taking an incremental, gradual approach to implementing evidence-based policing. He focuses on building data curiosity and buy-in within the department and advocates for hiring "pracademics" - academics with applied experience - to help bridge the gap between research and practice in policing.
As well as his role with the Seattle Police Department, Dr. Loren Atherley also leads a national data work group focused on Analytics & Evidence Based Policing and a research network comprised of more than seventy research professionals in institutions around the world. Loren consults across criminal justice on topics including statistics and research methods, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Loren is an NIJ LEADS Scholar and an inductee to the George Mason University Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame.
Loren holds an MA in Criminal Justice from Seattle University, where he is an adjunct professor, and he was just awarded his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
#81: Gina Hawkins
Gina Hawkins, former police chief, and President of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, discusses the importance of support networks and mentorship for women in policing. She emphasizes the ‘sorority-like’ connections among women leaders and talks about the personal sacrifices that come with taking on leadership, the need for better mental health and wellness support for police officers, as well as the historical stigma and lack of resources around this issue.
Gina Hawkins is the Assistant Chief Deputy for Cobb County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, is a former Chief of Police of Fayetteville, North Carolina and before that she served with the Atlanta Police Department. In 2020, the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives awarded Gina the Women Law Enforcement Executive of the Year Award, and she now serves as the organization’s president. She is also a member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the IACP, and the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association. She has a bachelors from Georgia State & a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. In 2019, Chief Hawkins was awarded the North Carolina Dogwood Award for pursuing community solutions to North Carolina’s most pressing safety issues.
More episodes: 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-80 | 81-current