Christine M. Cole currently serves as Executive Director of the Crime and Justice Institute, a division of Boston’s 136 year old non-profit, Community Resources for Justice. As Executive Director, Christine oversees a team of 20 working to increase safety and justice, reduce the reliance on incarceration, and instill cost effective and research based practices in over two dozen states. A CJI team, including Christine, is conducting a study of the COPS funded Collaborative Reform Initiative, and Christine serves on the monitoring team for Antelope County CA.
Prior to her role at CJI, Christine was the Executive Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. In addition to supervising staff engaged in safety and justice reform work with governments and international multilateral agencies in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South Pacific, Christine co-chaired and facilitated the NIJ funded Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety from 2008-2014. With police and union executives and scholars as members, the group produced 20 original papers drawing from confidential conversations at Harvard Kennedy School. Christine is one of three authors of the often cited 2008 study of the Los Angeles Consent Decree and the study of the response to the Boston Marathon bombings called Why Was Boston Strong?
Christine has worked in two municipal police agencies in Massachusetts as a Community Liaison/Policy Advisor and later as Director of Business and Technology. Christine also served as Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety, the governor’s policy advisor for criminal justice and homeland security. This office has financial, policy and managerial oversight of all executive branch safety and justice agencies. Christine also has experience as part of a prosecution team in her eight years as victim witness advocate. Christine has presented and taught to audiences in the US and abroad on community corrections, police-community engagement, coordinated crisis response of government agencies and linking safety and justice reform to good governance.