As well as me, this spring marks the 25th anniversary of her graduation from the law school. Its okay , tracey, you dont look it. I happened to be with professor meares for the john howard organization, a wonderful organization in chicago that works to improve the quality of illinois prison system. And one of the guests there told me that professor meares had just informed her that after earning her undergraduate degree from the university of illinois in engineering, she was contemplating going to law school. Being an engineering student she didnt know much about law school and without much thought she was tentatively planning to go to georgetown. But according to the story, the then dean of Chicago University law school gave tracey an offer, quote, she couldnt refuse. And so she ended up serendipitously in chicago and im pleased to say i was that dean. It was one of the best decisions i ever made as dean in terms of bringing people to the law school with the exceptions of hiring barack obama and elena kagan. Sorry, tracey. Upon graduating from the law school, professor meares served on the United States court of appeals for the 7th circuit and spent several years working for the department of justice. She then returned to the university of Chicago Law School as an assistant professor and then later served as a professor of law and director of the Law School Center for studies in criminal justice. Then, several years ago in a moment of just awful judgment, professor meares headed to some place called new haven where she sadly remains pathetically to this day. During her distinguished career rooted deeply in this Law School Professor meares has worked extensively among other things with the federal government, from 2004 to 2011. For example, she served on the committee on law and justice, a Standing Committee of the National Academy of sciences. In 2010 named by attorney general eric holder to sit on the science advisory board. And just last year president obama named her as a member of his task force on 21st century policing. Professor meares research focuses on criminal procedure and policy with a particular emphasis on empirical investigation. Shes published a long list of influential scholarly articles and important books including among them legitimacy in criminal justice, a comparative perspective, and urgent times policing and rights in inner city communities. In a time of Widespread National concern about community safety, criminal justice and police practices, professor tracy meares is one of the most thoughtful, respected and innovative scholars in the field. She is truly a national leader. And it is my pleasure to present my former student and my special friend professor tracy meares. [ applause ] thank you, geoff, for that generous introduction. I was honored to be asked by the legal forum to give this keynote and thrilled, really, to be able to come back home. Hud park has changed in so many good ways. I admit to feeling sad about the demise of ribs and bibs. The food wasnt great but the sniffs were incomparable. I thought a great deal about what i wanted to say today. My primary goal actually had to run back and get my prop was to emphasize the hard work, great work really that i did with ten of my other colleagues who ranged from Police Chiefs to young activists to civil rights lawyers to union representatives. We all served together on the president s task force on 21st century pope leasing. This task force was created in the wake of the shooting deaths of Michael Brown in ferguson and then the death of eric garner in new york at the hands of the new york city police. The president was especially concerned about the unrest that followed these incidents and he stated its actually a quote thats on the back of this report, im going to read it. When any part of the American Family does not feel its being treat ed fairly, thats a problm for all of us. Its not just a problem for some. Its not just a problem for a particular community or demographic. It means were not as strong as a country as we can be, and when applied to the criminal Justice System, it means were not as effective in fighting crime as we could be. Our task force was charge charged with examining how to foster strong collaborative relationships between local Law Enforcement and the communities they protect and to make specific recommendations to the president on how policing practices can promote effective Crime Reduction, a theme you heard a little bit about today for those of you in the much colder room five. The first pillar of our report is called Building Trust and legitimacy and i think thats the foundation of good policing. And im going to actually hit on that topic but theres a slight detour and that comes because i was just here last week, sadly not in hud park. And there i heard james comey speak at perf, that perf has an annual town meeting. I decided to shift the emphasis of my remarks a bit. At that meeting, comey, who is like me, an alum of this law school, he echoed there what he had said here just a few days before. Maybe even in this room. A spike in homicide and he said, referring to a conversation that he said he had who told him he felt this officer felt he was under siege because people were watching him with a cell phone and this officer told director comey he didnt feel like getting out of his car. Comey said, i dont know whether this explains it, and the it presumably hes talking about, the National Spike in homicide, entirely but i do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through american Law Enforcement over the last year and that wind is surely changing behavi behavior. That wind is surely changing behavior. Im going to leave aside, for the moment, whether there really is a National Surge that we need to explain at all and even if there were this National Trend whether there is any reliable serious data that there is a change in Police Behavior as opposed to anecdotal reports of understandable changes in feelings and attitudes of police who are now being more closely scrutinized than ever before. That could be partially responsible for this change. Im happy to return to both of these topics, but here is what i would like to focus my remarks on today. And that is i think the Public Safety narrative has lost its way. It needs to be redirected and reshaped. And thats why i chose the provocative title. I dont even know if you have you know my title. I was told i have to have a title for cspan. My title is, against Public Safety and for Public Security. Now let me explain. The president s Task Force Report makes public trust essential. The question is how do we do it . The Public Safety narrative, the narrative that makes what police do, the number of police, police strategies, where police go, absolutely essential to Crime Reduction. Ill call it Police Effectiveness, suggests that public support for police is directly related to the publics evaluation of Police Effectiveness. This turns out not to be the case. You might find that surprising in a world with media policy, comeys remarks, i think, reflect this. The notion of a ferguson effect itself suggests that there is a crisis that we might need such that we might need to sacrifice Police Effectiveness at Crime Reduction in order to fulfill our concern about police accountability, lawfulness, et cetera. Now it might surprise some of you in this room who are under the age of 30, and jeff has totally outed me. I cant even pretend that im under the age of 30 anymore. Thanks, geoff. It might surprise you to learn that the idea of Police Effectiveness at Crime Reduction that is a metric that should matter with respect to evaluation of police is actually a metric of relatively recent vintage. For decades many scholars of policing and policing them self believe Law Enforcement had little impact on crime rates. Venerable police scholar david bailey, who several in this room actually know well and have worked with, summed up this view nicely in his 1994 book police for the future and im going to quote. The police do not prevent crime. That is one of the best kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it. The police know it. But the public does not know it. Yet police pretend they are societys best defense against crime and continually agree that if theyre given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth. Now today, of course, Police Executives are expected and expect themselves to reduce crime in their jurisdictions. Policings potential to impact crime rates is conventional wisdom, actually, thanks in large part to the work of folks in this room like david wiseburg, frank zimmering, sitting right next to david, thank you. And other folks like steve levitt, who some of you know. However, as my colleague tom tyler noted in his testimony before the task force a few months ago, while police seemingly have become better and better over time at reducing and addressing crime, surveys indicating levels of public support for and confidence in police have remained relatively flat over the same period of time in which crime rates have fallen precipitously. And so perceptions of trust and confidence were grounded in assessments of Police Effectiveness, this isnt what we should be finding, right . So one might ask then if Police Effectiveness doesnt drive public trust, what does . Another answer might be police lawfulness. Again, in light of repeated incidents of quite Shocking Police brutality, consider here the tragic death of walter scott in north charleston, South Carolina, who was shot in the back by a white Police Officer as he fled, we might think that commitment to the rule of law and especially constitutional constraints that shape engagements between the public and police would support public trust. Of Course Police compliance is a critical component of a legitimate state. There are a couple problems with how to think about that relationship and public trust. One, of course, is whether we have an objective measure of police lawfulness. We heard a little bit about that today in frank zimmerings report about how we count civilian deaths at the hands of police. He gave us some very Interesting Data about that. I think theres a general sense, and here im not relying on data, that if you look at the period of time over which crime has declined, many people probably think that theres a much higher level of police lawfulness today than there used to be. There was an nrc report that seemed to indicate that, that came out about ten years ago. I collaborated again with people in this room on that report. Im not as confident of our assessment of that conclusion based on recent events, but heres another issue with thinking about the relationship between police lawfulness and assessments of public trust and that comes out of my open research again with tom tyler and jacob gardner. And our work demonstrates that public judgments of Police Legitimacy assessments of how the public thinks about whether police are doing a good job are not really that sensitive to whether police are behaving consistently with constitutional law, in fact. Because the public doesnt define lawfulness or determine sanctioning through the same lens of legality that police and other authorities use. This piece, this research im talking about, is forthcoming in criminal law and criminology and its called lawful or fair, how cops and lay people view good policing. We have some empirical evidence, right, showing theres this juncture. So if our goal is promotion of public trust, then we have to recognize that while both Police Effectiveness at Crime Reduction and police lawfulness are both relevant, neither alone is sufficient. I think the Public Safety narrative lost its way when many of its major advocates began to argue that Police Effectiveness at Crime Reduction has become selfjustifying, that reduction is a warrant for it self. Its not. We need a new narrative and ive decided to emphasize the word security as opposed to safety. There may be a better phrase. Maybe you dont like security. But heres the primary point. We need a Mission Statement for policing that recognizes that people desire to be kept safe from each other, security against private as well as be free from government repression, security against government overreach. And that pursuit of both at the same time is not a zero sum gain. How to achieve both . I think the answer is fairly clear or at least part of the answer and that is with and through a commitment to policing that makes legitimacy and procedural justice seven ral to its mission. Now youre going to learn much more when tom tyler summarizes his paper so im not going to take his thunder, and this will give us more time for questions at the end but i will sketch out a few points. Peoples conclusions regarding their assessment of the fairness of legal actors does not flow really or primarily from assessments of the Police Effectiveness task such as Crime Reduction or apprehension of wrong doers. Researchers have studied public evaluations of Police Officers, judges, political leaders, managers, teachers, and the findings are pretty consistent. Conclusions concerning legitimacy are tied much more closely to judgments of the fairness of the actions of these actors than to evaluations or fairness of the effectiveness of the outcomes. So in the social psychological literature it depends on four factors primarily. First, participation or voice is an important element. People report encounters with authorities when they have opportunities to explain their perspective, have commentary on law making and so forth, all of these things are general examples of voice. People care about the fairness of Decision Making by authority and by this i mean theyre looking to decision maker, neutrality, objectivity and f t factualty. Third, people care a great deal about how theyre treated by an organizations leaders and representatives. People desire to be treated with respect. In their interactions with authorities people want to believe the authorities are acting out of a sense of benevolence towards them. What people are looking for is a sense of the motives of the authorities that theyre looking that theyre dealing with. They want to believe that theyre sincere and well intentioned. What members of the public want is to believe the authority theyre dealing with. , lets say a Police Officer, counts. If im a member of the public and im dealing with a Police Officer, i want to believe that Police Officer believes that i count. Even if, of course, the officer doesnt believe that. Thats the trick part about this. That its about my perceptions, your perceptions. The publics perceptions and the way that we operate in the world is that were evaluating how were treated in these interactions. These dynamics are inherently relatable, not instrumental. Rather than being primarily concerned with outcomes and individual max miization of utility, and i am saying that in this room, legitimacy based compliance is centered on individual identity. Theres a lot more to be said about that and why thats true. I dont have time to go into that. Im sure tom will talk more about that this afternoon. Heres one implication. When police generate good feelings in every day contacts, it turns out people are motivated to help them fight crime. And we can expect that when they are, there will be lower crime rates in communities. But this isnt the only benefit of this approach. Right . Another approach and benefit of authorities treating members of the public with dignity and fairness is more healthy and democratic communities. And finally, if that werent enough, the research actually shows that when officers take this approach, it is better and healthier for them on the street. So how do we get there . The president s Task Force Made a number of recommendations. Im going to highlight just a few of them but i do encourage you to read this report. There are a large number of concrete, doable recommendations actually and its going to take all of us working together to get these implemented and to make a change. The task force recommended Law Enforcement agencies embrace what we call a guardian mindset for public trust and legitimacy. Sue was a sheriff in Washington State for a very long time and has written that officers must make a shift to a warrior mindset. We might think thats about Crime Reduction<