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Policing Styles: Does Europe Have a Better Model?
An America and the World Conversation on March 23 at 12:00 pm

The protests for racial justice erupted amidst a global pandemic and shone a light on the ongoing problem of systemic racism in the United States. How to address the disparity in how minorities are treated, especially concerning policing, became of primary importance. Dr. Kelsey Shoub, co-author of Suspect Citizens What 200 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race, will discuss how even the most routine interaction between police and citizens, the traffic stop, can be a window into racial inequality. What is the answer?  In Paul Hirschfield’s article, Policing the Police: U.S. and European Models, he suggests that we look to Europe. European policing is more centralized with national guidelines governing appropriate police behavior and extended training that focuses on de-escalation and the use of non-lethal methods of problem solving. Could our friends across the Atlantic help us develop a better model of policing?

Kelsey Shoub is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina and faculty affiliate of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. Professor Shoub's research and teaching interests span American Politics, Public Policy, and Methodology. Her work, more specifically, examines public policy process, race and policy, framing, and Congress using text analysis, machine learning, and big data. She is a co-author of Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Race and Policing (2018, Cambridge University Press), which is a co-winner of the 2019 Pritchett Book Award from the APSA Law and Courts Section. Suspect Citizens examines racial disparities in policing in North Carolina following  a traffic stop, potential sources of those disparities, and potential policies to address them. She has also published in Politics, Groups, and Identities.

She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 2018. She did her undergraduate work at the Ohio State University. Before becoming a faculty member at South Carolina, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Virginia with the Center for Effective Lawmaking.

Dr. Paul Hirschfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and an Affiliated Professor in the Program in Criminal Justice. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2003.  His research has focused on expanded criminalization and surveillance in American society.  In that connection, he has also studied the intensification of surveillance and criminalization in American schools, and racial disparities in these practices.  He is currently focused on efforts to dismantle the “school to prison pipeline” by expanding non-punitive disciplinary alternatives, and on understanding in variation lethal policing and police accountability across countries and police agencies.

In recent years, he has shifted his focus from criminalization to de-criminalization and non-criminalization.  With respect to de-criminalization, he has written on the expansion of positive and restorative alternatives to exclusionary discipline and school-based arrests.  With respect to non-criminalization, he is currently studying the social, political, and legal dynamics that explain why on-duty police violence rarely leads to criminal charges.  His work has appeared in Criminology, Sociology of Education, Theoretical Criminology, American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and elsewhere.

Moderated by Capt. Stacey L. Owens, recently retired captain for the Greenville Police Department in Greenville, SC, bringing 27 years of experience, he continues to serve his community.  Stacey served over 19 years in investigative roles and the majority leading the Professional Standards Division (Internal Affairs). Stacey was the law enforcement liaison to the City of Greenville’s Public Safety Citizens Review Board, the department's first Crisis Intervention Team Coordinator (police officers’ response to those with mental illness/crisis) and most recently, after retirement, appointed to the City’s Citizen Advisory Panel on Public Safety.  Stacey also serves on NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) National Board of Directors, Washington, D. C. MHAGC (Mental Health America Greenville County) and the GC Commission on Alcohol & Drug Abuse. Stacey is employed by the SPINX Company and is the Director of Community Relations and Engagement.  He can be contacted at sowens@spinxco.com

                                An Upstate International Month 2021 Event