Latest News, Analysis and Opinion

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.

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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.

OPINION: Public debate often frames fatal knife crime as a problem of serious youth violence in public space, but data from the National Child Mortality Database complicates this narrative, says the University of Bristol’s Dr Jade Levell, who argues that with children experiencing violence in a range of scenarios – including in education and as a result of domestic violence – there needs to be a fundamental shift to ensure they always have the right to violence support at the earliest opportunity.

FEATURE: A groundbreaking multi-agency Women’s Safety Unit in West Yorkshire, based on a partnership between the county’s Combined Authority, Violence Reduction Partnership and West Yorkshire Police, has cut rape investigation times by 40%, reduced the number of cases lost as a result of victim disengagement, and is “turning the tide on trust and confidence” with a satisfaction rate of more than 85% for domestic abuse victims with policing, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

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: Four months after the UK Government unveiled its proposals for the reform of policing in England and Wales, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett explores the challenges that the process is already facing, from concerns over accountability, governance and the uncertainty around police mergers, to questions over centralisation, the true of costs of reform, and whether the Government will have the political will or resilience to see the measures through to completion.

FEATURE: A lack of understanding around the management of sexual and violent offenders and child sexual abuse and exploitation teams, coupled with staff shortages and skills gaps, is damaging the wellbeing of officers and increasing the risk to the public, according to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, which is urging forces to stop neglecting “these important areas of policing” by refocusing on safeguarding and support at both force and national level.

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