AEC Presidents: Lawrence W. Sherman

Lawrence W. Sherman University of Pennsylvania Email: lws@sas.upenn.edu Phone: 215-573-9097 Fax: 215-898-6891

Lawrence W. Sherman has devoted most of his career to the design, conduct and analysis of randomized field experiments in criminal sanctions or crime prevention. Since launching the first random assignment test of arrest in police-citizen encounters in 1981 in the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, he has designed a total of 25 randomized field trials that have been completed and reported, either under his direction (21) or the direction of colleagues (4). These trials have been conducted in partnership with prisons, courts, probation, police and private security organizations, as well as with communities, crime victims and offenders.    The Director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, Sherman has led randomized field trials in six US cities, three English jurisdictions, and in the capital of Australia, including the first randomized controlled trials in the two-century history of the Metropolitan Police of London (Scotland Yard). By his own account, Sherman has “made more mistakes than anyone” in the design and conduct of randomized trials, possibly because he has made more attempts to insert experimental designs into ongoing or brand-new criminal justice operations. Dr. Sherman is also the Wolfson Professor of Criminology and Director of the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at Cambridge University. For the past decade, Sherman has co-directed with Heather Strang the largest multi-site program of research in experimental criminology, the Jerry Lee Program of Randomized Trials in Restorative Justice. This program tests the application of identical restorative justice principles by police officers trained by the same trainers in 12 different trials, addressing the question of “what works for whom” by varying offenders, offenses, victims, social settings and stages of the criminal justice process. The diverse results emerging from these trials provide the clearest evidence of the variable responses of different people to identical treatment, which has been a major focus in all of Sherman’s experiments. In order to recognize and encourage the work of experimental criminologists around the world, Sherman was the founding President of the Academy of Experimental Criminology in 1999-2001. He has also served as President of the American Society of Criminology (2001-2002), the International Society of Criminology (2000-2005), and the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2001-2005). He has won awards for distinguished scholarship from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He has received awards for his experimental partnerships from the Minneapolis Police Department, the Milwaukee Police Department, and the Kansas City (Mo) Police Department. Sherman is currently collaborating with the Adult Probation and Parole Department of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Schools of Medicine and Nursing on the design and conduct of a series of randomized trials testing health services interventions (both physical and mental) with probationers at high risk of committing serious violence, using violence prevention as the primary outcome of the trials. He is also collaborating with Richard A. Berk on the identification of high-risk probationers based on 519,168 probation case files, several thousand of which ultimately led to a charge of murder. Randomized Field Trials Designed and Co-authored by Sherman Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment Houston Police, Victim Recontact Experiment Newark Crime Statistics Newsletter Experiment Houston Crime Statistics Newsletter Experiment Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment Minneapolis RECAP Experiment Minneapolis Hot Spots Preventive Patrol Experiment Kansas City Crack House Raid Experiment Washington, D.C. Repeat Offenders’ Project (ROP) Experiment Canberra RISE (reintegrative shaming experiments)--youth violence Canberra RISE—juvenile shoplitfting Canberra RISE—juvenile property crime/personal victims Canberra RISE—drinking+driving London Robbery Restorative Justice London Burglary Restorative Justice Northumbria youth assault restorative justice Northumbria youth property restorative justice Northumbria adult assault restorative justice Northumbria adult property restorative justice Thames Valley violence: prison sentence + restorative justice Thames Valley violence : probation + restorative justice Randomized Field Trials Designed by Sherman, Reported by Others Detroit shoplifting experiment Minneapolis sergeant’s training experiment Miami police stress training experiment Minneapolis Community Crime Prevention Experiment

 

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