Still More From England

Reviewing my notes, here are a few selected moments that struck a chord with me from the US-UK criminal justice summit that our Centre for Justice Innovation put together with Policy Exchange last week:

Nick Herbert, the minister of policing and criminal justice, saying that it is time for the UK to break out of "stale thinking" about crime and that he welcomed the creation of the Centre for Justice Innovation to aid in this process.

Kit Malthouse, MP and deputy mayor of London, nodding toward our trial and error work, saying "we have to recognize that part of innovation is failure."

New York City Probation Commissioner Vinny Schiraldi, highlighting the differences between the US and the UK in terms of how government policy is made and how that may help to stifle innovation: "You can't fail small in the UK, you have to fail big."

Chris Watler of the Harlem Community Justice Center, encouraging criminal justice reformers to be more aggressive in getting their messages out to the public and the media: "We are a storytelling species."