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.