Julia Ryland

About

Julia is an ex-Metropolitan (London) Police Officer and a strong advocate for harm reduction and evidence-based police practice. She mainly worked in Camden Town where drug law enforcement was a key focus. Her experiences highlighted the failings of UK drug laws and police procedure. She studied MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice at Oxford University, completing a thesis entitled “An Evidence-Based Approach to Policing Drugs: If the War on Drugs is over, what should the police do?”. Since then, she has worked as a Strategy Advisor at the Ministry of Justice and a Drug Recovery Worker. She is involved in several activist organisations working to embed evidence-based, harm reduction approaches into policing practice. Today, she represents LEAP Europe, a growing group of international police and law enforcement who work to reduce the harmful consequences of policing drugs.