Interview with Jeffrey Seif

Can you tell us a bit about your work prior to joining the Institute of Criminology?

Before I came here half a dozen years ago, I had served as a pastor and divinity professor. It was my first education- I took a Master's, and then a Doctorate, in Theology and Divinity. I then served as a pastor and a Bible college and seminary professor, and I still do that to this day.

I had my foray into law and public service when I took a sabbatical from teaching, to go to the police academy. I wanted to donate a shift a week or so, believing that to have religious people in that culture might be a positive thing. So, I just volunteered about a shift or so a week, for about 10 or 12 years with the police in Dallas County, Texas. But eventually I got roped into teaching at the academy part-time, as the Evening Coordinator. Then I became the Interim Director of the academy, and then the Director of the Academy, at one, two, and then eventually over three locations. I kind of fell backwards into policing and police training.

Why did you decide to study criminology at Cambridge?

While I was falling backwards into policing, I thought that I wanted to get some more training in it. And I learned that Cambridge had a part time programme in Applied Criminology and Police Management.

I checked that out and I was quite frankly surprised that I got in. You know, it's a prestigious school. You would think that whatever limited slots there were would be given to people that had a little more runway ahead of them, rather than someone who's somewhere between going, going, and gone. But I got accepted. I did quite well on the Master's program- very well, in fact, much better than expected. So, I was basically invited into the PhD program. I didn't have to find my way in.

 So here I am now, researching ethics and police training. That's my world. The name of the game is, are there things that we can do at an entry level, to help cultivate what I call a proclivity toward legitimacy? Are there ways that we might be able to help officers be more kindly disposed toward marginalised persons?

What was the thesis of your MSt?

My MSt research was a randomised control trial. And it wasn't original to me.

I had discovered that Deborah Platz, who superintended police training in Australia, had come to Cambridge. But before that, she had gone to the FBI Academy in DC, part of continuing training. One of the things they did there is have people go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. They had a special exhibit on police and the Holocaust. She was intrigued by it, and so was I. One of the things they showed is that, when you think of the murder of 6 million Jews, it wasn't simply by Hitler, Himmler, or Eichmann. They worked through the police, to gather people up and facilitate all of this. I wasn't aware of that story, and I was fascinated by it. I'm of German Jewish extract myself. My mother was smuggled out of Germany by nuns. So, I have an emotional, intellectual, and social interest.

But Deborah reported they had this thing with the Holocaust Museum, which over 130,000 police have gone through now. She wondered if she could take this information back to Australia. Her thinking was that if people were exposed to police malfeasance from the past, that might moderate their sensibilities and incline them to be more kindly disposed toward out-group sorts. She conducted a randomised control trial, with a treatment group that was exposed to the story of police and the Holocaust.

 A survivor of the Holocaust and a historian came. And Platz was able to demonstrate, through baseline surveys and two follow-ups in a way that was statistically significant, that those who were exposed to this treatment moderated their dispositions toward out-group people. Not just Jews, but also gays, the weak, et cetera. Just people that weren't within the mainstream.

 So, I wanted to do a sister study. And I did. And my sister study showed moderating effects as well.

What was the focus of your recent PhD?

Initially, my plan was to work on my PhD and get more entrants for the study, in order to take a pilot case and substantiate it with more data. I got into the PhD programme with that in mind, but then I got in trouble by the police in Texas, for being too kindly disposed for marginalised people. There were complaints, by some cadets in my academy, that I should have thrown this person out but didn't. The state investigated and they found that I was too gracious. It mucked up everything.

 All of a sudden, nothing was happening anymore because I was in trouble. I wound up taking it to court and won decisively on the matter. I just thought that if I'm going to be considered an expert in police training, it just doesn't look good for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, that superintends training, to throw me out and tell me I don't know what I'm doing. But in any case, once I got in trouble it sullied my reputation a little. I had 50 people working underneath me in the academy. I had lieutenants and instructors that answered to me.

I wound up resigning and I pivoted away from that for my PhD work. As I said, it was going to be an expansion of my MSt. But I decided just to do a descriptive analysis. I looked at 25 years’ worth of data from the US Department of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and 50 years’ worth of data from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

I just wanted to see the extent to which our energies are expended in dealing with issues associated with kindness toward marginalised persons. I had to adjust. But you know, blessed are the flexible. They will not be broken. I got jammed up in the middle of it all, but I was able to recapture a vision for what I wanted to do. And that's what I’ve been doing.

What would you say are the most important things the Institute of Criminology has taught you?

Well, I just sent in my PhD dissertation on Wednesday morning. There isn't a single thought in that that I had seven years ago. I knew nothing.

I mean, in Texas I had got the credentials to become a Master Peace Officer. I was certified as a Police Academy Instructor and then as a Police Academy Director. But there was nothing in any of that that spoke about educating police. It was all about compliance with the powers that be: what forms need filled out, what boxes you need to check. As Foucault would put it, it was just training docile bodies to be obedient soldiers. There was nothing whatsoever that gave me any insights into helping people to really learn, never mind really learn ethics. So, it was all brand new to me. It was all a new frontier.

Let me just say, just because I knew nothing doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. All I knew is that in my experience, if someone's getting a degree in Criminal Justice, then in academia these issues percolate. But I was never trained as an academic criminologist. I just came through the craft. It may very well be this stuff is bandied about, but it never came to me until I came to Cambridge.

What advice would you give to somebody starting at Cambridge?

I don't know why someone would go to Cambridge without wanting to squeeze every drop out of the lemon. It just doesn't make sense to me. It's not some fifth-rate operation. Just by virtue of the fact that they’re there, they should really want to seize the moment and pay attention.

But I suppose what I would commend would be to go there as a student. The people that get into the MSt and PhD programmes, they're police executives, so they think they know everything. And then they hear these academics opining, and there's a sense that they're coming from another planet.

Oh, what do they know? They're not really police. But if someone's there, they should present to it with an open mind. Of course, you're not going to surrender your critical apparatus, but you want to go there as a student and get all you can out of it.

I am profoundly honoured to have made entrance into Cambridge. I flunked out of high school. I was on nobody's most likely to succeed list. I was a janitor for the first 10 years of my adult life. Nothing wrong with being a janitor- I really did get those spots out of the carpets. Religion helped me get my life together, and I wound up taking terminal degrees in Divinity at a good school. But getting into Cambridge was a dream come true for me. If you give it an honest effort, doors can open.

In closing, I'm honoured to have made it into the school. Now I'll be honoured to make it out, to tell you the truth. First you worry about what it takes to get into this place, and then you worry what it takes to get out.

I'm glad for the journey and humbled by the opportunity. Thank you for letting me tell my story.