On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, and in the past three years protesters across the country and around the world have mobilized to end police brutality. In September 2023, the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management (PCJ) will host “Resisting Police Violence: Global Strategies for Justice and Transformation.” This convening, co-organized by Malcolm Wiener Center Faculty Director Sandra Susan Smith and Yanilda González, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, will bring together policy-shapers and community activists from around the world to discuss their work to document and confront police violence in their local context. Three years after the murder of George Floyd and the mobilizations which followed, what is the state of global movements against police violence?
Ahead of this fall event, we share a selection of articles and recordings from the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management’s work on the topics of police brutality and racial justice in the three years since the killing of George Floyd.
“Anti-Black police violence is a global phenomenon, although shaped by local contexts. In order to understand and effectively combat state violence as well as transform the systems that both cause and shield it, we must share insights gleaned from a wide array of efforts and experts rooted in their communities to develop strategies that transcend borders.”
-Sandra Susan Smith, Director, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy
Kennedy School experts discuss racial justice and policing
Nearly three years after the killing of George Floyd, the Institute of Politics hosted Cornell William Brooks, Yanilda María González, and Malcolm Wiener Center Director Sandra Susan Smith to discuss the continuing problem of police violence in communities of color and Americans’ responses to it.
A Reimagined Public Safety: The Case of the Bromley-Heath Tenant Management Corporation
Drawing on interviews, archival, ethnographic, and police administrative data collected over the course of 24 months, explores how Boston public housing residents developed community-centered approaches to public safety from the late 1960s to the early 2000s in direct response to local government neglect and police violence.
Supporting student research on policing through research grants
The Program in Criminal Justice awarded grants to students conducting research to address questions related to the criminal legal system, including projects on police militarization on college campuses and on community-centered alternatives to policing.
The end of Us versus Them policing: The tough road ahead for reform
On the vlog PolicyCast podcast, Sandra Susan Smith and Yanilda González say history shows that reforming the police is much easier said than done. Sandra, Yanilda, and host Thoko Moyo tackle this difficult problem and explore possible solutions.
Reimagining Community Safety: A Program in Criminal Justice Speaker Series
For some, ending police brutality has meant reimagining policing, with an eye toward achieving racial equity in police treatment and in penal system outcomes. For others this has meant reimagining public safety, i.e., considering the various ways that society might achieve safe and secure neighborhoods with police as merely one of a number of institutions engaged in this broader project. For yet another group, community safety is the object of reimaginings. Here the effort is to center the needs and wants of residents of specific communities in efforts to reduce crime and the harms that come with it, to make wrongdoers accountable, and to bring about healing so that the community and its members can be made whole.
The Program in Criminal Justice organized a speaker series on the theme of Reimagining Community Safety. This series was an effort to better understand from the perspective of practitioners, policymakers, community leaders and activists, and academics 1) the long-standing nature and roots of this seemingly intractable problem, 2) why reforms have generally failed to achieve desired results, 3) what a different approach to community safety looks like, 4) what ongoing efforts in communities across the country hold promise for real and sustained change, and 5) what considerations should guide our evaluations of these efforts.
We share some selected recordings below:
Anti Police-Terror Project with Cat Brooks
For low-income communities of color, police engagement can produce more harm than good. Indeed, a growing body of research indicates that aggressive policing tactics lead to poor health, educational, and employment outcomes for adults and children. The , a San Francisco Bay Area organization, supports families that have survived police terror with resources, referrals, and opportunities to heal. Importantly, it also seeks to eradicate police terror in their communities. PCJ spoke with Cat Brooks, co-founder of APTP to learn how and what outcomes their efforts have produced.
The CAHOOTS model with Tim Black
Most agree that the police are asked to do far too much, including tasks that they are not trained to do and so are ill-equipped to do well. The model is an exciting one. It alleviates the police from undertaking tasks for which they are ill-equipped, especially those related to mental health crises, it does so effectively and without force/violence, and it does so far more cheaply. PCJ invited Tim Black to learn more about CAHOOTS, how it got started, what they do and how they do it, and why this might be a critical option for other jurisdictions across the country that are trying to address public safety issues without such a heavy reliance on police.
Reducing Racial Disparities by Removing Police from Traffic Enforcement
Philadelphia’s city council voted to bar police officers from conducting pretextual stops and searches for low-level motor vehicle infractions in October 2021, citing strong racial disparities in traffic stops and arrests. It was the first city in the nation to do so, but Philadelphia is hardly alone. Measures to decriminalize driving-while-Black are spreading, slowly but surely, and have major implications not only for racial disparities in traffic stops, but also for disparities in police use of force. To better understand this complex issue and its rich history, PCJ spoke with Sarah Seo, Professor of Law at Columbia University, author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom.
Malcolm Wiener Center
The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy’s faculty, staff, research fellows, and students are committed to achieving a deeper understanding of the barriers we face to greater equality and access to opportunities for all. Through rigorous research, quantitative and qualitative in nature, we offer policy solutions that have the potential to reduce or eliminate barriers and improve people’s lives.
The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation advances excellence and innovation in governance and public policy through research, education, and public discussion.
The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas.
The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School works to prepare its students to exercise leadership in a world responding to a rapidly expanding array of economic, political, and social challenges.
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
The Taubman Center for State and Local Government and its affiliated institutes and programs are the Kennedy School of Government's focal points for activities that address state and local governance and intergovernmental relations.
The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy serves as the hub of the Harvard Kennedy School’s research, teaching, and training in the human rights domain.
The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies works to increase knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of Latin America.
The Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project, situated within the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, focuses on using research and policy to promote antiracism as a core value and institutional norm.
The Institute to End Mass Incarceration is housed at Harvard Law School and helps to build community power and to advance ideas and solutions that will end mass incarceration.