Dr Alex Sutherland

Dr Alex Sutherland has spent much of his career to date in public policy research, covering criminal justice, education and (latterly) advising on a wide range of projects, including topics on unemployment, health, and economic growth. Much of his recent work with and for government has been with a specific angle on trying to bring greater rigour to policy - typically using randomised controlled trials.

Within crime and justice, he has worked on topics in policing, probation, and prisons. His largest bodies of work to date have included a multi-year, multi-site randomised experiment of police body-worn cameras and numerous large-scale randomised experiments in education. More recently, he led a programme of work on data linkage funded by ADR-England, that linked completed education experiments to alternative data sources. He is currently working on one of the largest experiments to date on what is called ‘focused deterrence’. Alongside that specific project, he provides part-time consultancy for the Metropolitan Police Service and advises several government departments on different areas of research and policy.