Our Funding

The Education Lab provides our services to non-profit and government agencies at no cost to them. We receive third-party funding from philanthropic and federal sources who have no vested interest in the outcome of our evaluations.

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Community Safety Leadership Academies (CSLA)

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About the PLA

The PLA is a violence reduction initiative that aims to prevent violent crime, support officers, and improve fairness and effectiveness in policing. We do this by developing better police management practices nationwide and in select cities globally, with a focus on many of America’s highest-violence geographies.

The academy, which is being rigorously evaluated to measure its effectiveness, addresses a persistent training gap by providing a five-month, robust management and leadership education to police at the commander level and at no cost to the department.

Focus on Police Commanders

Investing in law enforcement management education can transform public safety in an entire city simply by training a few handfuls of key people.

Currently, there are no national standards, curriculum, or best practices for training and supporting police commanders/captains/majors – the rank that oversee police precincts and station houses. Police commanders don’t directly supervise patrol officers – they supervise the supervisors and can exert much greater influence over local patrol behavior than department leadership. The PLA is the only police management and leadership education program in the country solely focused on this critical rank of police leader.

The PLA builds on prior research from the Crime Lab showing that changes in police department management can drive reductions in both violent crime rates and police use of force. The five-month curriculum provides hands-on training in datadriven management, violence reduction, and community trust.

Years Active

2022 – present

Topics

Project Leads

Roseanna Ander

Founding Executive Director

Kenneth E. Corey

Director of Outreach and Engagement, Policing Leadership Academy

Erin Kuller

Program Director, Policing Leadership Academy

Sandy Jo MacArthur

Director of Curriculum Design, Policing Leadership Academy

Luann Pannell

Director of Instructional Design and Academic Innovation, Policing Leadership Academy

Meredith Stricker

Executive Director, Policing Leadership Academy

Research Principal Investigators

Anthony Braga

Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania

Aaron Chalfin

Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania

Dylan Fitzpatrick

Research Director

Max Kapustin

Assistant Professor at Cornell University

Kailey White

Portfolio Director of Qualitative Research

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