Podcasts Education Self-Improvement Conversations with Tyler Rachel Harmon on Policing

Rachel Harmon on Policing

Published: June 17, 2020, noon

Long before becoming a legal scholar focused on police reform, Rachel Harmon studied engineering at MIT and graduate philosophy at LSE. \u201cYou could call it a random walk,\u201d she says, \u201cor you could say that I\u2019m really interested in the structure of things.\u201d But despite her experience and training, even she can\u2019t identify a single point of leverage that can radically reform the complicated system of policing in America. \u201cWe have been struggling with balancing the harms and benefits of policing since we started contemporary departments, so I don\u2019t think that we\u2019re going to suddenly fix this by flipping one lever.\u201d

She joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won\u2019t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn\u2019t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. They close by discussing the future of law schools, what she learned clerking under Guido Calabresi and Stephen Breyer, why she\u2019s drawn to kickboxing and triathlons, and what two things she looks for in a young legal scholar.

Read a\xa0full transcript\xa0enhanced with helpful links, or watch the\xa0full video.

Recorded June 8th, 2020

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