At the time of this interview, Jim Tillman worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a program manager for the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program. He began his career as a plant manager for the American textile firm Brown Group, after which he became a police officer in the U.S. His first international policing experience was in Haiti, where he worked on police reform and development. He later worked in Azerbaijan, Ukraine and throughout the Balkans.  

At the time of the interview, Garry Horlacher was security sector reform coordinator for the U.K. Department for International Development. Prior to that, he was part of the U.K. police for 30 years, retiring with the rank of chief superintendent.

At the time of this interview,  Francis Munu was assistant inspector general for crime services at the Sierra Leone Police. He joined the police service in 1984 and held various positions prior to becoming assistant inspector general.

At the time of this interview, Benson Bana was a senior lecturer on public administration and human resource management for the Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania program at the University of Dar es Salaam. He also consulted and conducted research in the same fields. A Tanzanian citizen, Bana earned a doctorate from the University of Manchester in the U.K. He worked in the Tanzanian public service, and as a human resource training and development manager in a multinational company. 

At the time of this interview, Semboja Haji was a researcher at the Economic Research Bureau at the University of Dar es Salaam. Trained as an econometrician in Sweden and Norway, he later became a senior research fellow at the Economic and Social Research Foundation in Tanzania, where he worked for eight years. He helped develop the Tanzania 2025 Vision and Zanzibar 2020 Vision strategies, and had extensive experience advising the Tanzanian government in areas including national investment policy, energy policy, telecommunication, economic growth and poverty reduction.

At the time of this interview, Anthony Howlett-Bolton was a strategic justice and security sector adviser, having retired four years earlier as a deputy chief constable for a police force in the United Kingdom.  He worked with the Lesotho Mounted Police, the (Lesotho) National Police Information Agency, Ministry of Home Affairs and Public Safety, and the British Council in Lesotho.  In 2007 Howlett-Bolton began work in Sierra Leone as an adviser to a development program, working with the police, prisons and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Gareth Newham studied organizational psychology and political studies at the University of Cape Town. He completed a post-graduate degree in political studies and wrote his honors dissertation on civil-military relations and how South Africa could ensure democratic control of the military. In 2002, he received a master’s degree from the Graduate School for Public and Development Management at Wits University. His master’s dissertation looked at how to promote police integrity at Hillbrow Police Station, a corrupt inner-city station. Newham previously worked for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) where he led the Provincial Parliamentary Monitoring Project and conducted research on provincial legislatures. He later served as project manager for the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) where he focused on police management issues and crime prevention. In March 2006, Newham became the policy and strategy adviser to the Gauteng MEC (Member of the Executive Cabinet) for Community Safety, a post he continued to hold at the time of this interview.