Faculty Director
Jerry Ratcliffe is a professor of practice and faculty director of the Master in Applied Criminology and Police Leadership in the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former police officer, a scientific advisor to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and host of the popular Reducing Crime podcast. After an ice-climbing accident ended an 11-year career with London’s Metropolitan Police, he earned a PhD from the University of Nottingham. He then coordinated Australia’s National Strategic Intelligence course before moving to academia in the US in 2003.
In Australia, he ran graduate programs in criminal intelligence and worked as a senior research analyst with the Australian Institute of Criminology, where he conducted one of the first evaluations of an intelligence-led policing operation. Since moving to Philadelphia, Ratcliffe has twice been awarded the Professional Service Award for outstanding contributions to criminal intelligence by the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA). In 2010 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIU), and in 2014 the Ronald V. Clarke ECCA award for contributions to crime analysis.
Ratcliffe has published over 120 research articles and related publications, and ten books, including: Intelligence-Led Policing; Reducing Crime: A Companion for Police Leaders; and in 2023 Evidence-Based Policing: The Basics. His studies have examined shootings in Philadelphia, drug market investigations in New Jersey, gang intelligence in Central America, and FBI anti-gang operations in Los Angeles. He has led numerous experiments, including the Philadelphia Predictive Policing Experiment and the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment, the latter winning a research award from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Academy of Experimental Criminology, was awarded the Joan McCord Award from the Academy of Experimental Criminology in 2019 and received the Sir Robert Peel medal from Cambridge University in 2023.
Ratcliffe has been an advisor to the Philadelphia Police Commissioner and the criminal investigative division of the FBI. He is a charter member of the FBI Law Enforcement Education and Training Council and has been an instructor for the ATF Intelligence Academy. He continues to work with police departments to advance problem-oriented, intelligence-led, and evidence-based policing, and has trained police officers in more than 20 countries.
