Missed Opportunities: Politics, Research, and Public Policy

Abstract

Iwork in two worlds which, unfortunately for all of us, are worlds apart. First, I work as a lawyer for the City of Portland, Oregon. As expected in 1991 America, our city's government leaders have declared that safety is their first priority. Accordingly, the City spends a substantial amount of time, money, and energy seeking to combat and reduce crime. My other area of work also emphasizes crime issues. As an adjunct faculty member, I work with colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health Sciences University who conduct research on criminal behavior and societal responses to crime. Their work is published in scholarly journals and reported at meetings of mental health professionals and criminologists. You would think these two groups of my colleagues would work closely together. After all, elected and appointed City officials are almost desperate to make a dent in crime. They are under intense public pressure to make neighborhoods safer and reduce the level of fear in the community. In this regard, they are like public officials at all levels of government across the country. They genuinely want to help citizens, and there could be no better political platform than being able to say they successfully fought crime. Thus, you would expect they would pay close attention to the current criminology research in order to increase the chances they could construct government programs that would work. Similarly, my mental health colleagues are committed to helping people be healthier and creating safer communities. You would think they would do all they could to ensure that research results improve public policy. Also. like politicians, they stand to reap collateral benefits from a collaboration with public officials. The researchers could become better known in their communities and perhaps even increase their chances of obtaining often needed government funding for their work. So do these two groups of dedicated professionals work closely together for the good of the community and their mutual benefit? Hardly. To the contrary, it sometimes seems they hardly know each other exists.