Executive Session on Policing
and Public Safety

Police agencies across the United States face a frightening array of new challenges, yet those agencies are equipped with organizational and strategic frameworks from an earlier era. What's more, they face these challenges at a time of high expectations established over a decade or more of declines in crime, and tight budgets at every level of government. The challenges themselves are many: some flow from the aftermath of September 2001, others involve new forms of crime made possible by the internet and other technologies, and still others are as intangible yet galvanizing as rising fear of crime and feelings of insecurity.

A generation ago, policing faced a similar set of challenges. The answers in that era were found through the Executive Session on Policing, jointly sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and the Kennedy School of Government starting in 1983. The participants in that Executive Session became the police leaders of choice for the next two decades.

The papers published during the course of the last Executive Session became essential reading in thousands of departments and executive offices across the country. The overarching strategy crystallized in that Executive Session--community policing--has become the dominant paradigm for policing across the nation and around the world.

Working again with NIJ, we have launched a similar Executive Session with equally high ambitions. The new Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety brings together today's established police executives with those rising to take their place. Joining these leaders in policing are local, state, and federal officials concerned with public safety as well as prominent academics. Together, the members of the Executive Session will elaborate the strategies and frameworks needed for policing in this new century.

Exceutive Sesasion on Policing and Public Safety, January 2008

The first meeting took place in January 2008, with the following members in attendance:

Chief Anthony Batts, Long Beach Police Department
Professor David Bayley, Distinguished Professor, School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York at Albany
Dr. Anthony Braga, Senior Research Associate, Lecturer in Public Policy, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Chief William J. Bratton, Los Angeles Police Department
Chief Ella Bully-Cummings, Detroit Police Department
Ms. Christine Cole (Facilitator), Executive Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Commissioner Edward Davis, Boston Police Department
Chief Ronald Davis, East Palo Alto Police Department
Chief Edward Flynn, Milwaukee Police Department
Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent, New Jersey State Police
Chief George Gascón, Mesa Police Department
Dr. David Hagy, Acting Principal Deputy Director, National Institute of Justice
Commissioner Raymond Kelly, New York Police Department
Chief Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle Police Department
Chief Cathy Lanier, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department
Ms. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library
Professor Tracey Meares, Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, Chief Executive, National Policing Improvement Agency (UK)
Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, Victoria Police (Australia)
Chief Richard Pennington, Atlanta Police Department
Mayor Jerry Sanders, City of San Diego
Professor David Sklansky, John H. Watson, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Professor Malcolm Sparrow, Professor of Practice of Public Management, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Chief Darrel Stephens, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
Professor Christopher Stone, Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Mr. Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Professor David Weisburd, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, Director, Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, The University of Maryland
Dr. Chuck Wexler, Executive Director, Police Executive Research Forum

This page will be updated with papers produced by members of the Executive Session.

Attendance at the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety is by invitation only.

The Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety is funded by the National Institute of Justice in the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) at the US Department of Justice.

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