Public Service Innovators -- Cliff Karchmer (MPA '73): Building Coalitions for Reform

Cliff Karchmer (MPA '73) took a break from working on his degree at the Kennedy School to complete a stint with the Pennsylvania Crime Commission where he was issued a firearm, but he never loaded it. He preferred a pen and paper instead. Now a 25-year veteran of criminal justice reform, Karchmer has seen where criminal justice reform has failed -- despite incredible investments of time by dedicated reformers.

"Most of these reforms have been poorly thought out, at least in execution," says Karchmer, director of program development at the Police Executive Research Forum, a membership and research organization that involves 800 police executives in demonstration projects and studies.

Because of his exposure to Kennedy School Professor Mark Moore and others, Karchmer now thinks more critically about innovation in criminal justice. He believes the key to successful reform is analyzing how it is implemented, which involves rallying internal support for reform and broadening the base of reform coalitions. And he's proven that time and again in his work on projects as varied as international cocaine and heroine traffic, money laundering and underage alcohol use. Karchmer is now building on that expertise by soliciting support for Medical-Police Collaboration to protect the lives of the most vulnerable victims -- infants, domestic partners and the elderly -- in jurisdictions across the country.

Often the most vulnerable victims are unable or unwilling to report their injuries to the police, so the abuse continues undetected. Police-Medical Collaboration, an innovative approach to preventing homicide, allows health care providers and police to work together to prevent patients from becoming victims.

"In most communities, there is an incomplete picture of these 'hidden' injuries and their victims. This creates a situation which leaves many injuries -- and even some homicide events -- mislabeled as accidental or of unintentional origin, when in fact they were intentionally caused," says Karchmer.

He points to the Denver Domestic Violence Collaborative, where a number of hospitals provide social workers to spend time with victims of questionable injuries. Over time, this collaboration allows patient-victims to trust social workers enough to reveal the origin of their injuries and extent of repeat abuse. "This leads to a variety of specially tailored interventions with very desirable outcomes," says Karchmer, who says that there are similar programs in the works in Charlotte/Mecklenberg, North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, and Springfield, Massachusetts.

"It's puzzling to me, as someone who has studied innovation in criminal justice for about 25 years, that these life-saving innovations originating in the health care domain have not spread beyond about ten jurisdictions nationwide," says Karchmer. "Spending a lot of quality time with potential victims can, and often does, lead to the truth about the injuries in question. In those cases, the patient-victim is persuaded to become part of the solution to the problem of repeat victimization."

Photo: Cliff Karchmer and his son

This piece was first published on June 22, 2001