Gaultier Fellow Works to Improve Police Training, Create Think-Tank Guide

Duquesne Gaultier Fellow Dr. Norm Conti has been using his faculty award to not only create a think tank related to the criminal justice system but to develop a how-to manual for other service-learning faculty and students interested in furthering their community work.

Conti, associate professor in the sociology department and the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy, received the Gaultier Fellowship in 2013 to deepen community-engaged aspects of his teaching and research. In the 2013-2014 academic year, 65 service-learning courses were offered, with more than 40 faculty members and 120 community partners leading 1,700-plus students through the service-learning process, according to Dr. Lina Dostilio, director of academic community engagement. Increasingly, students and communities want to stay involved beyond the semester, and think tanks like Conti’s could provide a framework for that continued involvement.

Conti has been involved with the national Inside-Out program since 2007, taking sociology classes behind bars and simultaneously teaching conventional college students and those who are incarcerated. The class provides opportunity to learn about barriers, stereotypes and universal aspects of humanity.

Building on this experience, Conti has continued weekly meetings this past year with seven men in the State Correctional Institution of Pittsburgh. Next summer, he plans to institute a training program with 15 police officers and 15 incarcerated men.

“Some men are facing life sentences, so they see themselves as having a certain responsibility,” Conti said. “They are pushing back against a culture of crime from prison.”

Their interests intersect with those of officers wanting to do good in the community and keeping families, often in high-crime neighborhoods, safe. “These officers are the same sort of guys as men on the inside: they’re masculine, aggressive and they want status,” Conti said.

The officers are open to training sessions with those who have crossed the law, and prison administrators support the initiative, said Conti. He views the project as incorporating the Spiritan mission of serving those who are underserved and hopes the project can impact police training across the country.

“This program provides an authentic relationship with those who are marginalized,” Conti said. “The voices of these men are increasing and, hopefully, will become increasingly present in society.

“We have to recognize our shared humanity, both theirs and ours,” he said. “There is a sense of transformation in seeing others and ourselves differently.”