Richard Bennett, Ph.D., a senior Fulbright Scholar and professor of justice, law and society at American University, will present a lecture on crime and security in the Caribbean at VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs next month.

The lecture, “Crime and Insecurity in the Developing World: The Case of the Caribbean Region,” will be held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 1, in the Commonwealth Ballrooms of the VCU Student Commons as part of the Wilder School’s Annual Criminal Justice Lecture.

In recent years, escalating rates of crime, violence and narcotics trafficking have been identified as major threats to economic growth and human development within the Caribbean by various watch groups, including the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs. In the March lecture, Bennett will examine the vulnerabilities posed by the region’s geographic location and discuss emerging approaches to crime prevention in the Caribbean and other developing areas.

Bennett is an expert on criminology, international crime and police behavior and has written extensively on justice administration both in the United States and abroad. He is the author of over 60 articles on international crime and police attitudes, including the book, “Police at Work.” He is presently at work on a manuscript entitled “Policing Paradise: A Comparative Study of Constables, Citizens, and the Administration of Justice in Three Caribbean Nations,” based on research he conducted in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago as a senior Fulbright Scholar.

Bennett is the past president of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) and a consultant to numerous organizations, including the Working Group on Caribbean Criminology, the Police Foundation, the Department of State Antiterrorist Assistance Program and the Department of Justice Peer Review Panels. He is the recipient of the ACJS’s Founder’s Award, a lifetime achievement award, and the Gerhard O.W. Mueller Award for outstanding contributions to the field of comparative criminal justice.