Education
Ph.D. Northeastern University
M.A. University of Massachusetts Boston
B.A. University of Massachusetts
About Lorenzo
Lorenzo M. Boyd, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized leader in police-community relations and an authority on urban policing, diversity issues in criminal justice, race and crime, and criminal justice systems.
He served for 14 years in the Suffolk County (Mass.) Sheriff’s department – working in policing, corrections, and the courts – which he says shaped his approach to teaching, research, and training of police commanders and officers.
As the former director of the University’s Center for Advanced Policing, Dr. Boyd built the center into a national resource for professional development, with a central focus on building levels of empathy and cultural competence among police leaders and officers. He reached out to commanders, chiefs, and police leadership around the region and the country to determine what their departments’ training needs are, and he developed interactive professional development with real-life scenarios and role playing.
In 2022, he helped the University secure a $1 million grant from the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) supporting a de-escalation training program that will be offered for police departments across the Northeast. The University is one of only six regional de-escalation training centers across the country that provides law enforcement training that is approved by the Department of Justice.
Selected Publications
Boyd, L.M, M.S. Morabito, L.J. Siegel. (2024). Policing in the US: Past, Present and Future. Cengage Publishing.
Boyd, L.M. (2024). “Should We Defund the Police?” In S. Mallicoat Crime and Criminal Justice: Concepts and Controversies (in press). Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.
Helfers, R.C., Jones-Brown, D. and Boyd, L.M. (2022). "Policing in the aftermath of the 2020 protests: Lessons learned and evolving strategies for reform", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 45 No. 4, pp. 541-555.
Boyd, LM. & K.C. Dumpson. (2019). Black Lives Matter: The Watchdog For The Criminal Justice System, In B. Berry (Ed.), Appearance Bias and Crime. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN: 9781108377683)
Boyd, LM. & F. Spina. (2019). Massachusetts Criminal Justice System. Carolina Academic Press. (ISBN: 978-1-61163-657-4)
Boyd, LM. (2017). "Does Police Discretion Help or Harm Our Criminal Justice System?" In S. Mallicoat Crime and Criminal Justice: Concepts and Controversies (pp. 198-200). Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.
Taylor, A, L Guevara, LM Boyd, RA Brown. (2012). "Race, Geography, and Juvenile Justice: An Exploration of the Liberation Hypothesis." Race and Justice, 2(2), 114 - 136.
Boyd, LM, J. Joseph. (2012). "Transnational Gangs" The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Wiley-Blackwell.
Guevara, L, LM Boyd, A. Taylor, RA Brown. (2011). "Racial Disparities in Juvenile Court Outcomes: A Test of the Liberation Hypothesis." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 9(3), 200-217.
Boyd, LM. (2010). "Light Blue vs. Dark Blue: Attitude Differences in Quality of Life Policing." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 8(1), 37-48.
Liederbach, J., LM Boyd, RW Taylor, & SK Kawucha. (2007). "Is it an inside job?: An examination of internal affairs complaint investigation files and the production of non-sustained findings." Criminal Justice Policy Review, 18(4), 353-377.
Boyd, LM., S Cain, & J Liederbach. (2007). "Community Policing: A Theoretical Rationale for Success." American Criminal Justice Association LAE Journal. Fall. 35–39.
Jackson, AL & LM Boyd. (2005). "Minority Threat Hypothesis and the Workload Hypothesis: A community-level examination of lenient policing in high crime communities." Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law and Society, 18(1), 29-50.