Features

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.

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.

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.

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.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: The debate around mission-critical communications often focuses on championing one technology over another, but that shouldn't be the case. Leveraging a combined approach can create the level of resilience emergency situations require, while unlocking enhanced capabilities as they develop.

INNOVATION: The cybersecurity governance now in place in the NHS has been prompted by a series of painful catalysts, but the end result is a mandatory assessment framework open to public inspection; independent researcher and governance adviser Vsevolod Shabad argues that policing in the UK has plenty to learn from the NHS experience, as well as the opportunity through partnership with government to build something better.

OPINION: The ongoing legal proceedings against Queensland Police Service by an Indian Uber driver is the latest case to highlight a culture of racism and lack of accountability in this and other Australian forces, says strategy and reform consultant Kavitha Vipulananda, who argues that for policing in the country to earn the trust of the communities it serves – including growing and diverse migrant and Indigenous communities – “the cycle of incident, apology and impunity must be broken”.

FEATURE: A evaluation of the effectiveness of violence reduction units (VRUs) across England and Wales following their first five full years of funding indicates that the initiative has contributed to significant falls in hospital admissions due to knife crime and violent assaults, but also highlights that a range of structural and cultural challenges arising from the multi-agency approach – particularly around data sharing – are preventing VRUs from realising their full potential, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: With ethics frequently bound to professional standards in UK policing, the current reform proposals offer an opportunity to reset the issue of ethics as one of aspiration rather than compliance, says police officer and ethics specialist Dr Richard Cockbain – but failure to do so could leave policing risk building a future “with a ceiling that was only ever meant to be the foundations”.

INNOVATION: The fully automated Trauma Tracker system launched by Avon and Somerset Police will enable line managers and wellbeing professionals to proactively manage workforce exposure to trauma, as well as giving officers and staff regular updates on the possible impact that traumatic incidents may have on their wellbeing, as Inspector Stuart King explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

INTERVIEW: Last year’s National Police Chiefs’ Council Innovation and Digital Summit and the subsequent proposals in the Government’s police reform white paper have put the development of technology firmly in focus for UK policing; Policing Insight’s Martin Buhagiar spoke to Humberside Chief Constable Chris Todd, Chair of the National Police Data and Analytics Board, about the tech opportunities offered by the planned reforms, the growing enthusiasm for better exploitation of data, and the need for intuitive solutions.

OPINION: A new bill currently progressing through the New Zealand Parliament will make sexualised deepfakes a crime; Dr Cassandra Mudgway, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Canterbury, believes that while criminalisation is to be welcomed and brings New Zealand into line with other countries including the UK and Australia, tackling the issue effectively will require regulation of the technology industry.