Professor Lawrence Sherman KNO, FRSA, University of Cambridge

Lawrence W. Sherman is Chair of the Cambridge Police Executive Programme and Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing. He launched the field of evidence-based policing with his 1998 Police Foundation Lecture, and in 2017 founded the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, a “pracademic” journal featuring research led by practicing police officers. His own research interests are in the fields of crime prevention, evidence-based policy, restorative justice, police practices and experimental criminology. He has conducted field experiments, for example, on finding more effective ways to reduce homicide, gun violence, domestic violence, robbery, burglary, and repeat crime by low risk, high-volume offenders. With the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing, his team is currently providing evidence-based targeting algorithms for police resource allocation to police in Kent, Durham, Lancashire, Devon & Cornwall, and other countries.

Sherman has served as president of the American Society of Criminology, the International Society of Criminology, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and as Honorary President of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing. In recognition of his work, he has received a honorary Doctorates from the University of Stockholm and Denison University, as well as the Royal Society of Arts’ Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Beccaria Medal of the German Society of Criminology. In 2016 King Carl Gustav appointed him a Knight Commander (KNO) of Sweden, and in 2017 the President of Yale University awarded him the Wilbur Cross Medal.