Professor Lawrence W. Sherman

 
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Founder and former Director

Email Address: ls434@cam.ac.uk

Professor Sherman was the founder of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing (CCEBP). He was the Director of CCEBP until the start of October 2022 when he moved to take up a full time post with the Metropolitan Police Service as the Chief Scientific Office. He is the Wolfson Professor of Criminology Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, where he is also past Director (2012–2017) of the Institute of Criminology. Currently serving as Director of the Institute’s Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology, his 1998 Police Foundation Lecture on ‘Evidence-Based Policing’ is widely recognised as the foundation of a global movement generating professional societies for evidence-based policing in the UK, Australia-New Zealand, Canada and the US, now with over 5,000 members. Professor Sherman has served as the Honorary President of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing (UK) since its formation in 2010, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing launched in 2017. He was also Director of the Cambridge Police Executive Programme, offering a part-time Master’s degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management at the University of Cambridge with over 170 students from ten countries. 

 

Professor Sherman began his career in police research in the New York City Police Department in 1971 as a civilian analyst in the Office of the Commissioner. Since then, he has conducted or designed field research and experiments in over 30 police agencies across five continents, including the Metropolitan Police in London and the Australian Federal Police. His research on policing has received honours from eight universities and seven scientific societies, and he has been elected President of both the American and International Societies of Criminology. His major contributions include his development of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, his 1987 discovery that most crime occurs in a small number of hot spots, and the first controlled experiments in hot spots patrols, in police use of arrests for domestic violence, in police-led restorative justice conferences, and in pre-charge rehabilitative offender management.

 

From 2010 through 2012, Professor Sherman served as course co-director (with Lord Blair) of the Indian National Police Academy’s (then) 8-week MCTP-IV Programme in both Hyderabad and the UK. During that time, over 500 IPS officers spread over 5 batches completed the course. Since then, Professor Sherman has directed partnerships with the Hong Kong Police College, the Australian Institute of Police Management, the Danish National Police, and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. He has also taught at police colleges or academies in Vietnam, Sweden, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Uruguay, Colombia, Canada, and the FBI Academy.

 

In October 2022 Professor Sherman left CCEBP to take up a new full time post as the Chief Scientific Officer for the Metropolitan Police Service in London.

 

Selected Publications: 

  • Sherman, Lawrence W. (2013) ‘The Rise of Evidence-Based Policing: Targeting, Testing, and Tracking.’ Crime and Justice (42:1), 377–451. 

  • Sherman, Lawrence W. (2010) ‘An Introduction to Experimental Criminology.’ In David Weisburd and Alex Piquero (Eds.) Handbook of Quantitative Criminology. Springer, New York, 399–436.      

  • Sherman, Lawrence W., et al. (1997) Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising: A Report to the United States Congress. Washington DC, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. 

  • Sherman, Lawrence W., Patrick R. Gartin, and Michael E. Buerger (1989) ‘Hot Spots of Predatory Crime: Routine Activities and the Criminology of Place.’ Criminology (27:1), 27–56.