Our Faces of Leadership

"One of the things I think that researchers aren't good at is making sure their research is translatable to the people who need it, and the people who need it don't know how to get it, and so I think one of the things we have a responsibility to do is build bridges between the two…

"When a program wants to start, the researchers should be at the table, thinking it through: 'How can be better measure this?' And when a researcher wants to ask the question, they should be pulling in the practitioners and say, 'Is this really the right way to ask this question? What else do we need to know?'…

"We publish our papers, we do our research and then say, 'Here, do what you want with it,' without really telling people how to use it. And if you don't give people the tools on how to use what you have done, it's just going to sit on the shelf."

"When you look at criminal justice systems today and how policymakers structure the system and run it, you see that usually, people use the same bunch of metrics. The most popular are crime rates, arrest rates, conviction rates, recidivism rates, cost, and while each one of those, of course, has its own rationale, and it does a partial job, none of them is dominant or widely used...

"There is a cacophony of metrics. These existing metrics are intensely flawed, and although each one of them has some value… they are still incomplete or problematic because while measuring something, they ignore other things that we think we should care about in the criminal justice system: respectful treatment of victims, humane treatment of offenders, strengthening and rehabilitating communities, repairing the harms."

“The communities and people impacted by reforms or by policies do not see the world in the same way that those making the policies see them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but to truly understand the success or failure of a policy, you really have to engage in a conscious effort to step into the shoes of those who are actually impacted by the reform...

“Convincing policymakers that they should listen to the local everyday lived experiences of communities is quite a challenge. The key here is starting with this rich-detailed locally relevant qualitative information, but translate it into a kind of technocratic language of quantification and measurability—and that’s the language that policymakers tend to react to.”

"The best way to communicate is really to learn how to listen. It's not always about what you want, but what do other people want? That's empathetic listening for me... If you have empathy, I think that's how to best connect with people in terms of communication."

"I'm thinking in a systematic way around addressing criminal justice around addressing the underlying features that create the conditions where criminality thrives…

"Creating opportunities from the cradle to the grave for people to transform their lives… In terms of education, skill development, and job opportunities, and to use every part of what we have available as a local government, as a local authority, to create these opportunities…

"It's about really being directional and intentional in creating opportunities and working in a collaborative way with colleges, universities, businesses, and each of the directorates of our local authority to really make sure that we are being ambitious in what we are creating for those communities that are most disadvantaged and therefore most at risk of having an alternative experience which leads to a long-term career in criminal justice pathways…

"You have to create alternatives in order for people to have a sense of choice or that people even really care about their life journey, so they can transform that…

"Wherever you are in the world, wherever poverty, disadvantage, oppression exist, you find crime. How are you gonna get out of that? Unless you start creating some other levers, so that people think, 'I don't wanna go down that road, that one looks like I could lead a good life from that, so let me go down that road.'”

“There are many young people… who end up in jail for a minor offense, but they end up in jail, and there are almost no opportunities for rehabilitation…

“Kids and young people who grow up without proper education, surrounded by addiction, are not going to contribute anything positive to the community and society…

“Youngsters are often stigmatized: ‘He or she is dangerous, don’t give them a job.’ No, no, no! Emphasis must be placed on them because if not, they are lost generations.”

"Three characteristics of kids bolstered these conclusions that kids had reduced criminal responsibility: immaturity and impulsivity, susceptibility to peer influences, and transient personalities that were not fully formed…

"They think differently than adults… They have different calculations for risk assessment, and they are much more likely to emphasize short-term gains over long-term losses…

"The neuroscience basically has bolstered what we already knew: kids do stupid, reckless stuff without thinking about the consequences, and now we know that it is in part because their brains don't work right…

"When kids are transferred to criminal court, they are actually more likely to be convicted, more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to receive harsher sentences than young adults who are convicted of the same crimes, so that rather than youthfulness being a mitigating factor at sentencing, it has been an aggravating factor in which kids actually receive harsher sentences."

"Exposure to violence during the childhood and youth years, when the brain is in transitionary stages, still developing, is a major factor that increases the chances of violent acts later in life…

"Data show that over 60 percent of children are exposed to at least one form of direct or indirect violence before age 18. So, it means that every single child is more likely than not to be exposed…

"In parents who were exposed to violence when they were younger… and weren't treated, we see the effect seeping down to their children too. And we see children affected by proxy even when they are not aware at all of the parent's exposure."

"What really affects homicide rates is essentially the propensity to violence among males who are strangers to one another… and that propensity to violence is affected by social trust…

"Homicide rates, the best statistical indicator of crime rates that we have, are highly responsive to people's feelings of trust in government and trust in their fellow citizens…

"When it comes to criminal justice, soft variables - how people feel, how much trust they have in the government, how much trust they have in one another - control the hard variables, like how much crime there is…

"We think social trust is the metric that rules all the others and binds them. But it doesn't replace them -they have a place. Things are measured in recidivism, arrest rates, conviction rates, crime rates, all important, but social trust is the ring that binds them…

"How do we know if our criminal justice system is functioning well or poorly? What should we measure to find out if our criminal justice is functioning well or poorly? Our answer is social trust."

"Open up the system, show what you are doing, show what the challenges are, what you could deliver if you were better equipped... People generally can relate to certain personal stories as well and ask themselves, 'If somebody has stolen your TV, is your first goal the punishment, the harshest as possible, or would you like to get something back as well? If you want to get some compensation, then how could you get it if you lock up the person for 30 years?'…

"If the system is not aligned with the need to reform itself, then probably it will fail, whatever you do with the public."

"The United States historically has had an extremely punitive justice system, both for children and for adults. And as a consequence, and as a consequence of that system, up until very recently, youth who were tried in our adult criminal justice system were subject to the more extreme penalties, including the death penalty, including life without parole…

"There's not a consensus sadly about how we should treat children in the justice system. There continues to be a view among some law enforcement and among many prosecutors and district attorneys that children should pay a heavy price for criminal conduct that they become involved in."

“We have children who are living in poverty. They might have a pretty poor lived experience at home, living in chaos, not knowing when they were getting food, maybe a peer with addiction problems, so is it no wonder when they come to #school that they react badly when a teacher gets in their face...”

“Children need to feel they belong, and they need to be part of their local #communities, so we need to value their experiences even if they are radically different from ours. And that is a real challenge for #teachers, as it’s a challenge for me. I wasn’t brought up in #poverty, so I don’t have that lived experience, and it can be too easy to be judgmental. ‘If only they didn’t do this, they would be so much better.’ But maybe they don’t have a choice, or maybe, at this point in time, they don’t have the personal capacity to be able to manage.”

"There are many researchers who just want to look at the numbers or just want to look at the things people tell them that are most important to look at, let's say policymakers. That's important, but it isn't the whole picture…

"There's a whole sort of critical initial stage of understanding the phenomenon from the perception of the people who are affected by it and the perception of the people who are involved in the system administrating it…

"While we can measure the jail population - we know if it's going up or down - the issue then is what's driving it, and that requires more of an understanding of all the processes that go behind any of those outcome measures."

"Sometimes, things aren't as they seem, and they require digging deeper to uncover what's going on. Collaborating with partners can help us bring all the pieces of the puzzle together and help us identify what the best solutions are…

"It's about really bringing everyone together to offer the most diverse and adaptive response… whether that be proactive in building resilience to the wider community and nation, or whether that be reactive initiatives to support specific individuals…

"When we work with those individuals, we are sidelining and not really overemphasizing enforcement and criminal justice measures, but instead we are focusing on safeguarding as to how we can better protect that person's safety, future, and life ambitions."

"Make it clear to the public and to policymakers that your end goal is to have a safe, thriving community… and I think you are going to find that you get a lot more traction…

"Sometimes, people in the advocacy community think that public safety is the opposite of what they are fighting for. That's absolutely wrong. Public safety and things like justice and protecting rights and making sure that due process is given, all those kinds of things go hand in hand. Those things are really core to having a system in which people respect the law and obey the law and are cooperative with law enforcement, and all those kinds of things that we care about having. So I think you really have to communicate that message - that criminal justice reform produces public safety."

"You are going to look at the lives lived and then shape the services around that…

"Any government tends to look at things in sections: look at justice, or education, or health, whereas actually a child’s life is lived in one whole in which the various services impinge…

"In the last ten years or so in London… there have been rises in violent crime of various sorts for various reasons... Any analysis says the way to deal with this is first of all by early prevention and intervention, and that means having a core set of approaches that all of the services share, as the way in which they are going to deal with [the] prevention of youth violence or deal with its consequences…

"We are trying to make sure that the organizations - police, health, education, and the leadership of those - understand the need for a common language and common approach…

"The institutional barriers are the particular key performance indicators that each organization has: do they align with each other?"

"Take the time to build trust, the networks, and the communities. Rather than thinking about this as a pushing-out of information, but more thinking about this as a two-way communication channel…

"For me, what's become really clear is that the communication with policymakers or people who are going to be implementing some of these changes is very different from communication with the general public…

"The task is to make it feel like it's actually part of people's reality… because, for some people, it may not be, especially people who are not involved in policymaking or who do not feel like they have a personal connection to it for some reason."

“It is not only poverty that causes young people to become criminally involved—it is often due to social inequality or domestic violence.”

“Even though children’s rights are well protected by law in Europe, they are often not sufficiently respected in everyday life.”

“Real public safety comes from community investment, not punishment. Without increasing resources to community-driven solutions, we are simply perpetuating the cycle of violence, trapping communities in a system that prioritizes incarceration over opportunity.”

“Emerging technologies are increasingly a feature of youth justice systems, and these systems are both raising new issues and embedding existing systemic inequalities and human rights impacts.”

“The challenge here is the question: can this new way of engagement through Social Media be able to solve systemic issues that they are trying to work for? How is it possible to influence policy without engaging with the traditional mechanisms of how policy is formed?"

“This program provided space for me as a young person to work with leaders from several generations, and emphasize the importance of equatable, supportive, and accessible education systems as a means to improve youth justice.”