Welcome
Welcome to the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology. The Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology conducts and synthesizes randomized controlled trials of policing, criminal justice and crime prevention programmes, in tandem with training doctoral and post-doctoral students the methods and practices of experiments in crime and justice. The Centre's mission is to produce better evidence for advancing human liberty. Founded in 2007 with support from the Jerry Lee Foundation of Philadelphia, the Cambridge Centre works closely with the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. In collaboration with the Australian National University, these centres jointly operate the Jerry Lee Program of Randomized Controlled Trials in Restorative Justice, a series of 12 field experiments involving over 3,000 crime victims and offenders. The Centre is also undertaking new experiments on a variety of innovations for preventing serious crime, including homicide.
Centre Members
News from the Centre
Research News
- Research undertaken by MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management students demonstrates that just 15-minutes a day on foot patrol reduces serious violence in crime 'hot spots'. September 2021
- Professor Lawrence Sherman appointed by the US National Academies of Sciences to chair an 18 month project on 'Evidence to Advance Reform in the Global Security and Justice Sectors'. February 2021
- New research: Racial Disparities in Homicide Victimisation Rates: How to Improve Transparency by the Office of National Statistics in England and Wales. November 2020
- New research: Detecting Modern Slavery on Cannabis Farms: The Challenges of Evidence. September 2020
- BBC Report on research that police patrols at Underground stations in London helps reduce crime. January 2020
Publications
- Rothwell, S., McFadzien, K., Strang, H., Hooper, G., & Pughsley, A. (2022) Rapid Video Responses (RVR) vs. Face-to-Face Responses by Police Officers to Domestic Abuse Victims: a Randomised Controlled Trial. Cambridge Juornal of Evidence-Based Policing
- Neyroud, P. W. (2021) Globalizing evidence-based policing: Case studies of community policing, reform, and diversion. In E. L. Piza and B. C. Welsh (Eds), The Globalization of Evidence Based Policing (Innovations in Bridging the Research-Practice Divide). Routledge
- Sherman, L. W. (2021) The Cambridge Police Executive Programme: A global reach for pracademics. In E. L. Piza and B. C. Welsh (Eds), The Globalization of Evidence Based Policing (Innovations in Bridging the Research-Practice Divide). Routledge
- Bedford, L. W. & Neyroud, P. W. (2021) ‘Organisational Learning from Field Research in Policing: How Police Can Improve Policy and Practice by Implementing Randomized Controlled Trials’. In J. F. Albrecht & G. Den Heyer (Eds.), Enhancing Police Service Delivery: Global perspectives and contemporary policy implications. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature
- Ariel, B, Bland, M. P., & Sutherland, A. (2021) Experimental Designs (This book is part of the SAGE Quantitative Research Kit) This book covers the basics of designing and conducting basic experiments, outlining the various types of experimental designs available to researchers, while providing step-by-step guidance on how to conduct your own experiment. As well as an in-depth discussion of Random Controlled Trials (RCTs), this text highlights effective alternatives to this method and includes practical steps on how to successfully adopt them. Topics include: · The advantages of randomisation · How to avoid common design pitfalls that reduce the validity of experiments · How to maintain controlled settings and pilot tests · How to conduct quasi-experiments when RCTs are not an option Practical and succinctly written, this book will give you the know-how and confidence needed to succeed on your quantitative research journey.
- Nivette, A., Zahnow, R.,…Ariel, B.,... & Eisner, M. P. (2021) 'A global analysis of the impact of COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions on crime'. Nature Human Behaviour.
- Maskály, J., Kutnjak Ivković, S., & Neyroud, P. (2021) Policing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploratory Study of the Types of Organizational Changes and Police Activities Across the Globe. International Criminal Justice Review
- Maskály, J., Kutnjak Ivković, S., & Neyroud, P. (2021) A comparative study of police organizational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic: responding to public health crisis or something else? Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice
- ć, S., áExplaining Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Chinese Police Officers. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice
- Bland, M. P. & Ariel, B. (2020) 'Targeting Domestic Abuse with Police Data'. Springer
- Bland, M. P. (2020). Algorithms can predict domestic abuse, but should we let them? In H. Jahankhani, B. Akhgar, P. Cochrane & M. Bastbaz (Eds.), Policing in the Era of AI and Smart Societies. (139-155). Springer.
- Hiltz,N., Bland, M. P., & Barnes, G. (2020). Victim-Offender Overlap in Violent Crime: Tageting Crim Harm in a Canadian Suburb. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, 4(1-2), 1-11.
- Martain, B., Harinam, V., & Ariel, B. (2020). Linking body worn camera activation with complaints: The promise of metadata. Journal of Criminology
- Kumar, S., Sherman, L. W., & Strang, H. (2020). Racial Disparities in Homicide Victimisation Rates: How to Improve Transparency by the Office of National Statistics in England and Wales. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing
- Ramiz, A., Rock, P., & Strang, H. (2020). Detecting Modern Slavery on Cannabis Farms: The Challenges of Evidence. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing
Talks and Interviews
- The Reducing Crime podcast - Lawrence Sherman talks with Jerry Ratcliffe. November 2019
- Watch the Evidence-Based Policing Seminar at the French Academie des Sciences
- Imprisonment and Crime. 'Al Capone, The Sword of Damocles and the Police-Corrections Budget Ratio'. (Lawrence Sherman)
- The 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal Lecture, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce: 'Professional Policing and Liberal Democracy'. (Lawrence Sherman)
Awards
- Professor Lawrence Sherman receives the 2020 August Vollmer Award
- Yale Graduate School honors four alumni with Wilbur Cross Medals (Lawrence Sherman) 24 October 2017
Experimental criminology is the use of advanced experimental methods to answer key questions about the causes and responses to crime.
- How much crime does prison prevent--or cause--for different kinds of offenders?
- Does visible police patrol prevent crime everywhere or just in certain locations? What is the best way for societies to prevent crime from an early age?
- How can murder be prevented among high-risk groups of young men?
This presentation by Cambridge University describes one such experiment: Cambridge Ideas Video.
These and other urgent questions can be answered most clearly by the use of a research design called the randomized controlled trial.
This method takes large samples of people - or places, or schools, prisons, police beats or other units of analysis - who might become, or have already been, involved in crimes, either as victims or offenders. It then uses a statistical formula to select a portion of them for one treatment, and (with equal likelihood) another portion to receive a different treatment. Any difference, on average, in the two groups in their subsequent rates of crime or other dimensions of life can then be interpreted as having been caused by the randomly assigned difference in the treatment. All other differences, on average, between the two groups can usually be ruled out as potential causes of the difference in outcome. That is because with large enough samples, random assignment usually assures that there will be no other differences between the two groups except the treatment being tested.
Experimental criminology is a rapidly growing field, with increasing influence on public policy decisions. It has already shown how to prevent millions of violent crimes, as well as unnecessary pre-trial detention of millions of people. These reasons alone make it appropriate to locate the world's first Centre of Experimental Criminology at Cambridge University. For, like experimental medicine, this branch of criminology uses a scientific method that was invented by a Cambridge graduate, Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, whose theoretical work on experimental methods revolutionized the study of cause and effect. In his time at Cambridge Fisher won the undergraduate mathematics prize and later spent 17 years as Professor of Genetics. Among his many ideas was the central insight that random assignment of a consistent action across some but not all of a large population could "hold constant" the other factors that could affect any subsequent outcomes.
In 1959 Cambridge established the first Institute of Criminology in the English-speaking world, with close links to the UK government and its need for policy-relevant research. Established in part with funds from the Wolfson Foundation at the request of Home Secretary RA Butler, the Cambridge Institute of Criminology has engaged equally with theoretical and applied questions of the causes and prevention of crime throughout its distinguished history. These questions were of great interest to the Institute's founder, Sir Leon Radzinowicz, as well as to two of the previous Directors: Sir Anthony Bottoms and Professor Friedrich Losel. They have also been of particular interest to the Institute's polymath of all branches of criminology, Professor David Farrington, who co-founded the Academy of Experimental Criminology in 1998 and served as its President (2001-2004).
For these and other reasons, the Jerry Lee Foundation decided in 2006 to offer to assist in the founding of the first university centre devoted solely to the advancement of experimental criminology. With the Lee Foundation's initial pledge to fund a programme of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral 'Jerry Lee Scholars', the University agreed to have the Jerry Lee Centre of Criminology established in the Law Faculty's Institute of Criminology in 2007. In that same year Lawrence Sherman, the University's 4th Wolfson Professor of Criminology, was appointed the first Director of the Jerry Lee Centre.
This appointment also bench marked ten years of a continuing collaboration between Lawrence Sherman and the Foundation's President, Jerry Lee, who has championed social science research in business and government for decades. Their collaboration includes contributions to the founding of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology; the Jerry Lee Centre of Criminology and the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania; the Division of Experimental Criminology of the American Society of Criminology; and other initiatives for advancing the institutional development of criminology. This includes the largest programme of multiple randomized trials of a single crime prevention strategy ever conducted in experimental criminology, the Jerry Lee Programme of Randomized Controlled Trials in Restorative Justice, a series of 12 field experiments involving over 3,000 crime victims and offenders.
A recent independent evaluation of seven of these Jerry Lee Programme experiments, conducted by Professor Joanna Shapland and her team, found an overall 27% reduction in the frequency of re-convictions of offenders two years after random assignment to restorative justice meetings, compared to similar consenting offenders who were chosen for the control group.
The Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at Cambridge has two primary tasks:
- One is to conduct research, with emphasis upon primary and secondary analyses of randomized controlled experiments in crime and justice.
- Its second task is to select and train an outstanding cadre of experimental criminologists for the future.
The Centre's research programme is currently focused in three major areas:
- One is restorative justice, through the multi-national efforts noted above. This includes its responsibility for the Campbell Collaboration's systematic review of the effects of face-to-face restorative justice on crime victims and offenders.
- A second area of research is homicide prediction and prevention. This includes various initiatives with UK police and health agencies, as well as with Philadelphia's Adult Probation and Parole Department. The first paper of this project on forecasting homicide was published by the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A).
- The third and most rapidly-growing area is the conduct of field experiments in collaboration with UK police agencies, led by the Greater Manchester Police in its TEST (Tactical Experiments and Strategic Testing Program.
The Centre will carry out its training mission by recruiting and training highly effective people to design key experiments in crime and justice, to obtain funding and agency partners for conducting the experiments, and to analyze and report the results of these experiments with integrity and insight. These tasks go well beyond the standard skill-set found in observational or analytic criminology, and are especially dependent on the interpersonal and emotional intelligence of the scholar. People with excellent academic achievements are especially welcome to apply for the fully-funded Jerry Lee Scholarships to pursue pre- and post-doctoral training in experimental criminology. Those who show, in addition to excellence at writing and thinking, the best evidence of ability to create and lead research projects will be the most competitive.
Anyone interested in applying to the programme can gather further information from the Centre Director, Dr Heather Strang.
CrimPORT
We are currently engaged in several vital projects to advance our field, including:
- CrimPORT: The Criminological Protocol of Randomized Trials (download form)
- Policing Hot Platforms in London Underground - Operation Beck CrimPORT 1.0
- Registry of Randomized Trials in Criminology for police and corrections
REX-COST
REX-COST is an acronym of Registry of EXperiments in COrrections Strategy and Tactics
All submissions for this registry should be sent, in CrimPORT format, to Dr Heather Strang.
Registry of Experiments
- Criminological Protocol for Operating Randomized Trials, Ruback 2012
- Do offenders discover the harm of their offences? A multi-site randomised controlled trial evaluation of the Sycamore Tree Programme, Wilson 2013
REX-POST
REX-POST is an acronym of Registry of EXperiments in POlicing Strategy and Tactics
All submissions for this registry should be sent, in CrimPORT format, to Dr Heather Strang.
Registry of Experiments
- West Midlands Police
- Operation Beck
- Operation Turning Point
- The Salt Lake City Court-Mandated Restorative Justice Treatment For Domestic Batterers Experiment - Part I
- The Rialto Police Department Wearable Cameras Experiment
- Western Australia Police Body Worn Video Experiment
- R-TREC - Protocol for Efficiacy Trials
Armed Police
Experimental criminology is scientific knowledge about crime and justice discovered from random assignment of different conditions in large field tests. This method is the preferred way to estimate the average effects of one variable on another, holding all other variables constant While the experimental method is not intended to answer all research questions in criminology, it can be used far more often than most criminologists assume. Opportunities are particularly promising in partnership with criminal justice agencies
Police Vans
The highest and best use of experimental criminology is to develop and test theoretically coherent ideas about reducing harm from crime, rather than just evaluating existing or even new government programs. Testing key ideas, in turn, can help to accumulate an integrated body of grounded theory in which experimental evidence plays a crucial role. When properly executed, randomized field experiments provide the ideal tests of theories about both the prevention and causation of crime.
The many advantages of experimental methods help explain why this branch of criminology is growing rapidly. Just since 2005, the field has seen its first journal established (Journal of Experimental Criminology), its own separate Division of Experimental Criminology within the American Society of Criminology, and the first University centre dedicated solely to this field: the sponsor of this page, the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at Cambridge University. All these institutions are dedicated to making the most of the better knowledge experiments can bring.
Yet these advantages depend entirely on the capability of the experimenters to insure success in achieving the many necessary elements of an unbiased comparison. Many, if not most, randomized field experiments in criminology suffer flaws that could have been avoided with better planning. The lack of such planning, in turn, may be due to the scant attention paid to field experiments in research methods texts and courses. Even skilled, senior researchers can make basic mistakes when conducting field experiments, since experiments require a very different set of skills and methods than the normal science of observational criminology.
This web page is intended to help foster better experiments in criminology, in three ways:
- Providing a format for experimental planning, called protocols.
- Providing registries for criminology experiments, where protocols can be transparent and credible.
- Providing links to people doing experimental criminology, to foster more communication.
For further information about experiments in criminology please contact Dr Barak Ariel.
For other global institutions in experimental criminology, please click on the following links:
- Division of Experimental Criminology, American Society of Criminology
- Journal of Experimental Criminology
- Academy of Experimental Criminology
- The CONSORT Group