The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) held a conference focused on the theme of Evidence to Action. The conference’s many discussions all engaged with key questions about how the criminal and juvenile justice fields can take up research findings and apply them in policy and practice. Dr. Tracie Keesee served as a panelist during the Spatial Analysis of Crime: Promoting Community-Based Safety Plenary session. NIJ published a recording and full summary of the conference and select panels in a recent article. The following is an excerpt:
Widening the definition of community and ensuring that people with differing opinions are involved is critical in any discussion on spatial analysis, according to Tracie Keesee, co-founder, president, and chief operating officer of the Center for Policing Equity.
“There’s an exhaustion in Black and brown communities around experiments, science, and doing something where they’re not at the table,” she said.
Keesee emphasized that community means very different things in different places, and often researchers only invite people who agree with them to participate in projects. Instead, there needs to be collaboration among social scientists, psychologists, economists, and others. Law enforcement cannot be the driver of everything, she said.
Read the full piece on the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice website.