Professor Sutherland has worked on public policy evaluations for more than 20 years, initially in criminal justice, then education, but latterly across a range of policy areas. Alex was previously Chief Scientist and Director of Research & Evaluation at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). He worked closely with the UK government and was global lead for BIT’s research and evaluation function, working across policy areas, with responsibility for research standards, quality assurance and methodological development at BIT. Prior to that he was Senior Research Leader, Home Affairs and Social Policy, RAND Europe where he co-led the education and criminal justice portfolios, as well as being overall lead for randomised trials. Prior to this Alex worked as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, where he coordinated and taught courses on research design and advanced quantitative methods for graduate students. Alex completed his DPhil at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and before his DPhil spent several years as a research officer at the Centre for Criminology, also at Oxford.
Alex is currently working on a large randomised controlled trial of Focused Deterrence across five sites in England. Alongside, he is a senior advisor to the Metropolitan Police Service’s Strategic Insight Unit, consultant to two UK government departments running large programmes of work in adult education and crime reduction, and works as a freelance research consultant, notably for the UK Cabinet Office.
Find out more about the Another Chance Fund Focused Deterrence programme: a multicentred randomised controlled trial.
