Andrea M Headley, PhD

Andrea M. Headley is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She is also an Affiliate Fellow at the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law. She is a scholar of public management, racial equity, and criminal justice policy. At the heart of research lies the question how can we create a more effective and equitable criminal justice system?

Headley’s research focuses on policing to understand how organizational, managerial, and individual level factors affect service delivery and outcomes, with a keen focus on inequities and disparities. Specific examples of her past work include improving police-community relations in communities of color, assessing the effect of race during use of force encounters, evaluating body-worn cameras, understanding national police reform commissions, analyzing dispositional outcomes in citizen complaints, and exploring the gendered norms and cultures in policing.

Her research has been published in journals including the Public Administration Review, the American Review of Public Administration, and the Journal of Criminal Justice, and funded by the American Institutes for Research, Department of Justice, National Science Foundation, and the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. Headley enjoys working directly with public sector organizations to conduct both applied and engaged research to improve service delivery and racial equity.

Prior appointments include Visiting Scholar of Race, Policing and Crime at the National Policing Institute, Assistant Professor in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD in Public Affairs from the Department of Public Policy and Administration and an MS in Criminal Justice from Florida International University. She holds a BS Ed. in Community and Program Development as well as Criminology from the University of Miami.

Sub-specialities:
Police-community relations
police use of force
police reform
body worn cameras
hiring officers of color
racial equity
community policing
civilian oversight boards
criminal justice management
public management