Latest News, Analysis and Opinion

INTERVIEW: The Coalition for Canadian Police Excellence (CCPE) has published a white paper setting out the case for a National Centre for Police Excellence; CCPE President and former Toronto Deputy Chief Michael Federico spoke to Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend about the inquiries that prompted the work, the distinction between education and training at its heart, and the constitutional realities of building a national body in a province-led system.

OPINION: As the review of the Government’s reform proposals to reduce the number of police forces in England and Wales gets underway, there may be significant learning that can benefit policing from the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) programme that has taken place over the last few decades, says Craig Taylor, CTO of Phoenix Software, who sets out some of the key lessons from the LGR process.

LATEST RESEARCH: This summary curates the key policing-related research that's been published online in the last week, with links to the original journal articles, and selected abstracts.

ANALYSIS: With nearly 50 million people estimated to be in modern slavery, and global money laundering flows reaching up to $2 trillion a year, the connection between human trafficking and financial crime has never been more consequential for international policing; strategy and reform consultant Kavitha Vipulananda examines how Interpol co-ordinates measurable responses across 196 member states – despite resource gaps, the political misuse of some tools, and persistent corruption continuing to constrain what it can achieve.

King's Birthday Honours: We are pleased to publish and recognise Australian policing recipients of the 2026 King's Birthday Honours. The team at Policing Insight offer our congratulations and thank them for their service.

INNOVATION: Hate crime investigations are among the most complex and emotionally charged cases for officers, with more than half of cases ending due to victim attrition; Metropolitan Police Inspector Craig Went highlights the results of a new ‘secondary reassurance contact’ approach, developed with colleague DCI Dan Whitten, in which a relatively small change in process is leading to a significant reduction in victim withdrawals.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Bringing together governments, regulators, manufacturers, operators and end-users, Critical Communications World (CCW) is the premier free-to-attend international gathering where every stakeholder in the sector can connect, collaborate and shape the future of mission-critical technologies.

INTERVIEW: Following on from the recent Police Interview Summit organised by interview tools and software specialists Davidhorn, Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to company CEO Børge Hansen about the value of closer collaboration and understanding between police and suppliers, the importance of developing investigative interviewing skills through an officer’s career, and why forces should look beyond upfront technology costs to recognise the long-term operational benefits of technology investment.

OPINION: With growing concerns in many countries about the online radicalisation of young people, Dr Soumya Awasthi, a fellow of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation, and Dr Fitriani, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Cyber Technology and Security Program, believe that Australia and India could learn much by sharing their country’s experiences.

INTERVIEW: In the latest in a series of interviews with leading figures involved in the research and investigation of organised crime (OC), Policing Insight’s Dr Chris Allen spoke to journalist and author Peter Walsh, whose most recent book is now a major Netflix series, about how he first become focused on organised crime, why capping high-value banknotes could be a key step in tackling OC, and how the kingpin strategy may have led to a rise in drug trafficking.

FEATURE: The nature of digital radicalisation across Europe is changing significantly, reports Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth, with the rapid increase in ‘awful but lawful’ content that is ‘gamifying’ extremist violence to ‘seduce’ people – especially children and young people – already acknowledged by European security agencies as a specific threat that needs to be addressed.

FEATURE: This week is the first anniversary of Restorative Solutions delivering the Appropriate Adult Service for vulnerable adults in police custody across West Yorkshire, having launched the service on 1 June 2025; Volunteer Appropriate Adult Dr Kathryn Sharratt and Service Delivery Manager Kate Brooksbank provide an insight into the organisation’s partnership with West Yorkshire Police, the invaluable contribution of volunteers, and the positive difference their support can make to vulnerable adults in police custody.

INTERVIEW: A new organised supply chain crime intelligence desk has been launched by Opal, UK policing’s national intelligence unit for serious organised acquisitive crime, which will develop strategic and tactical intelligence packages for forces to help them tackle the increasingly sophisticated efforts of organised crime groups that divert goods through cybercrime, create ghost companies to steal contracts from businesses, and target warehouses and depots, as Opal Head Jim Taylor told Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

LATEST RESEARCH: This summary curates the key policing-related research that's been published online in the last week, with links to the original journal articles, and selected abstracts.

INTERVIEW: Proposals for an Animal Protection Disclosure Scheme, known as Holly’s Law and modelled on Clare’s Law (the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme), could soon be debated in the UK Parliament; former police officer Mark Randell, a campaign manager at the Naturewatch Foundation, explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons why the link between animal abuse and coercive control and violence could be crucial in tackling domestic abuse, and how officers can play their part.

OPINION: With over 1.3 million domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes recorded by police in England and Wales in the year to March 2025, it’s a complex and challenging area for policing; postgraduate Evian Karlsen and Policing Lecturer Lee Curran of Liverpool John Moores University warn that amongst that complexity, male victims remain under-reported, under-recognised, and often underserved, with better training, challenging assumptions and improved partnerships the key to addressing the issues.

King's Birthday Honours: We are pleased to publish and recognise New Zealand policing recipients of the 2026 King's Birthday Honours. The team at Policing Insight offer our congratulations to Inspectors Ross Grantham and Neru Leifi and thank them for their service.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Criminal networks operate across cases, locations and time, but intelligence often remains tied to individual incidents. That gap makes it harder to understand how activity is organised. This article explores how connecting information across investigations helps reveal the wider network and supports more targeted, effective responses to organised crime.

FEATURE: Mandatory training on autism awareness for police would equip officers with the skills needed to interact more effectively with neurodiverse communities, as well as increasing trusts and confidence, argues Edinburgh Napier University postgraduate student Victoria Paterson, whose own work with Police Scotland showed that officers “were really positive and wanted to get involved”, as she explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

ANALYSIS: The new Domestic Abuse Protection Order (DAPO) will bring together the best elements of the existing civil order regimes in England and Wales, providing a flexible court order that also has teeth, explain Joe Purshouse and Jamie Wilson of KBW Chambers in Leeds, who believe this “sea-change in the landscape of civil preventive orders” offers policing and legal teams an exceptionally powerful resource for disrupting perpetrators of domestic abuse and securing the safety of victims.

FEATURE: The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has been given six months to work with the Home Office to produce a long-term, costed IT strategy after the first agency-wide HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services inspection found that existing systems were “not fit for purpose”; the NCA has also been urged to address staff shortages that impact on analysis capabilities and act on workforce concerns over bullying, harassment and discrimination, reports Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: The Government has set out clear ambitions to save police officers in England and Wales six million hours through technology, and invest in AI to cut the Crown Court backlog that’s predicted to hit 100,000 cases by November 2027; Alex Lowe of public safety technology experts Axon argues that those aims are two ends of the same solution – a digital thread running from the first 999 call to the final verdict – which needs to be treated as a whole-system approach to justice technology.

OPINION: Implicit bias training has become the default policy response to disproportionate use of force, but evidence suggests it changes knowledge, not behaviour; organisational psychologist Michael Stephenson looks to an unexpected source – the world of professional poker – for a more effective approach, grounded in neuroscience rather than sociology.

FEATURE: A study into building procedural justice in street-level drug law enforcement in Australia suggests that the decriminalisation of drug use and possession offences, expanding harm reduction approaches, and giving all alleged offenders the chance to tell their side of the story, could help to build positive interactions between officers and people who use drugs, as well as increasing the willingness of users to co-operate with police and abide by the law, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.