Law Enforcement Accountability: Has the tide finally shifted?
When: Nov. 02, 2021 2:00 PM ET
Where: Virtual
Featuring:
- [Moderator] Steven Greenhut, Resident Senior Fellow and Western Region Director, State Affairs, R Street Institute
- Jillian Snider, Policy Director, Criminal Justice & Civil Liberties, R Street Institute
- Philip K. Howard, Chairman, Common Good, Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling, LLP
Improving public oversight of law enforcement officers has been an uphill battle, given the power of police unions and public concern about crime. For years, those unions have thwarted efforts to open disciplinary records to the public, reform asset-forfeiture laws and create a more rigorous system of removing bad officers. A variety of highly publicized excessive force incidents have sparked reform efforts. Police unions are playing defense for the first time in decades. The goal is to look at practical ways to put the public back in control of public safety policies.
This Zoom conference features two prominent thinkers in the police-reform and governmental-reform arena, who will discuss practical ways to boost accountability and restore trust in the nation’s system of justice.
Philip K. Howard is the chairman of the board of Common Good, a nonpartisan national coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America, and senior counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP. His latest book is Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left (W.W. Norton & Company, January 2019), and he is a leader in government and legal reform in America.
Jillian Snider is the policy director for the R Street Institute’s Criminal Justice & Civil Liberties team. She is a retired New York City police officer, and also teaches as an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration.
The discussion will be moderated by Steven Greenhut, R Street’s Western region director and a longtime California-based newspaper columnist. He has covered California policing issues throughout his career at the Orange County Register and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Recommended reading materials:
- The Rule of Nobody, Philip K. Howard https://philipkhoward.com/book/the-rule-of-nobody/
- “Is it Time to Rethink ‘Broken Windows’ Policing,” Jillian Snider and Maya Szilak https://www.rstreet.org/2021/09/03/is-it-time-to-rethink-broken-windows-policing/
- “How California Softened Its ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Approach,” Steven Greenhut https://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/102.pdf
Image credit: Aldeca Productions
