Conference on Police Reform in States under Transition

On March 4 and 5, 1996, the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control, in conjunction with the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, convened a research planning conference on "Police Reform in States under Transition." The conference was unusual in that its primary purpose was to foster an ongoing discussion between academics working in the area of democratization and police reform, and policymakers running police reform programs in countries such as Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, South Africa, and EI Salvador. Our primary goal for the conference was to construct a research agenda that would allow continued dialogue between scholars and policymakers, and would focus on questions of theory and practice immediately applicable to policymakers in the field.

Participants in the conference included Robert Perito, Special Advisor to the Director of the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), U.S. Department of Justice; Frederick Mecke, Director, Office of International Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State; Arnstein Overkil, Police Major General of Asker and Baerum Police Headquarters in Norway, and advisor to the Palestinian Authority on policing; Diana Gordon, Chair of the Department of Political Science at City College of New York; Louise Shelley, professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University; William Stanley from the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico; Jeffrey Ian Ross, a fellow at the National Institute of Justice; and faculty and staff from Stanford University and the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.