Profile
Professor Betsy Stanko OBE is the Academic Co-Lead for the Home Office funded Operation Soteria Bluestone, and Strategic Advisor for the National Operating Model for the investigation of rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO), for which she was the co-architect. Operation Soteria Bluestone designed the new operating model for the response to and the investigation of rape and sexual assault in England and Wales. Previously Prof Stanko worked for more than a decade within the Metropolitan Police Service’s Corporate Development department, forming the force’s first ‘evidence based’ research team. She played various roles within the Metropolitan Police, all focusing on how to harness routinely collected information as intelligence, analyse, map and anticipate problems and suggest solutions systematically. Professor Stanko was also Head of Insight and Evidence for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
For over 25 years, she was a professor of criminology, teaching and researching at Clark University (USA), Brunel University, Cambridge University and Royal Holloway, University of London (where she is an Emeritus Professor of Criminology). 1997-2002, she was the Director of the ESRC Violence Research Programme. She is a Visiting Professor in City University London’s Sociology Department, Sheffield Hallam’s Law Department.
Professor Stanko has been awarded several academic lifetime achievement awards, including the prestigious American Society of Criminology’s Vollmer Award (1996), recognising her outstanding influence on criminal justice practice in policing violence against women. She received an OBE in 2014 for her services to policing. In 2018, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University.
