Welcome to A Measure of Justice, the webpage of the Indicators in Justice and Safety Affinity Group, brought to you by the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice. For more information, please contact your host, Selen S. Perker. 

Who are we?

We are a group of government officials, NGO leaders, donors, researchers and practitioners who are passionate about improving the management and measurement of justice and safety. This website is a space to share the initiatives, insights and measures of justice and safety championed by practitioners and researchers from around the globe. What distinguishes us?

• we focus on actors and initiatives that make sense at the national level;
• we focus on signs of success and ways to overcome challenges, rather than ‘gap analysis,' and
• we embrace work and ideas that are ‘in progress'

The group 'meets' every two months via a global conference call - you can access details of the topics here. The group participants also share a variety of resources and blog posts about what they are learning from the practice of implementing, reforming and measuring justice and safety initiatives.

Our affinity group includes government leaders from countries such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Jamaica; NGO directors; researchers; practitioners from donor and international agencies.

How did we start?

The affinity group was born out of a series of projects, called Indicators in Development: Justice and Safety, which were implemented by the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and funded by the UK Department for International Development, as well as AusAID. The countries that were part of these projects included Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone. The projects equipped government and civil society organizations with the skills and experience to design their own indicators, routinely assess those indicators, and use them to drive meaningful reform in the justice sector. Teams from the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management traveled in-country to conduct collaborative indicator development research, and hosted workshops and meetings both at Harvard and in country to strengthen the skills to thoughtfully use local data, design, interpret and manage with indicators. The Program continues to provide this support in Ethiopia.

This affinity group and the associated global conference calls keep alive the knowledge exchange and surface ongoing progress from an expanding group of professionals.