Meares, Tyler, and Goff to Serve on Panel on Proactive Policing

Three members of the Justice Collaboratory—Tracey Meares, Tom Tyler, and Phillip Atiba Goff—were named to serve on the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Proactive Policing. The term “proactive policing" encompasses the universe of policing strategies that are explicitly intended to prevent or reduce crime, as opposed to reacting to criminal events after they have occurred. The purpose of the Committee on Proactive Policing—Effects on Crime, Communities, and Civil Liberties is to review the evidence on the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime and disorder, to examine the legality of these approaches and the possibility that they may be applied in a discriminatory manner, and to assess the impact of proactive policing on public perceptions of police legitimacy.

Tracey L. Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale University. Before arriving at Yale, she was Max Pam Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice at the University of Chicago Law School. She was, at both The University of Chicago and Yale Law Schools, the first African American woman to be granted tenure. Before going into academia, Professor Meares held positions clerking for the Honorable Harlington Wood, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and as an Honors Program Trial Attorney in the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.

Tom R. Tyler is the Macklin Fleming Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School. He is also a professor (by courtesy) at the Yale School of Management. He joined the Yale Law faculty in January 2012 as a professor of law and psychology. He was previously a University Professor at New York University, where he taught in both the psychology department and the law school. Professor Tyler’s research explores the role of justice in shaping people’s relationships with groups, organizations, communities, and societies. In particular, he examines the role of judgments about the justice or injustice of group procedures in shaping legitimacy, compliance, and cooperation.

Phillip Atiba Goff is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, currently on leave as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the co-founder and president of the Center for Policing Equity, and an expert in contemporary forms of racial bias and discrimination, as well as the intersections of race and gender. Goff has conducted work exploring the ways in which racial prejudice is not a necessary precondition for racial discrimination.

Read more about the panel.