Features

INTERVIEW: In the second part of Policing Insight’s interview with Avon and Somerset Chief Constable Sarah Crew, she spoke to James Sweetland about the controversial incidents around issues of race explored in the TV series To Catch a Copper, and her own views expressed last year that the force is institutionally racist.

FEATURE: In January the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association (GLEPHA) published a series of reports as part of the ‘Envisaging the future of policing and public health’ project, covering a range of topics including harm reduction, diversion, and policing mental health; in the sixth in a series of seven articles, Policing Insight’s Thomas James looks at GLEPHA’s report on policing key populations.

ANALYSIS: Last week’s publication of the first part of the Angiolini Inquiry report highlighted significant concerns around misogyny, misconduct, and toxic cultures in policing in England and Wales; the findings echo previous research of female officers’ lived experiences by Senior Criminology Lecturer Dr Emma Cunningham, who believes policing needs support from outside experts to tackle misogyny and misconduct, and that change should begin with acceptance of the terms institutionalised racism and misogyny.

ANALYSIS: As organisations, individuals and communities around the world look to mark International Women’s Day, Dr Sarah Jane Fox of the University of Leicester Law School looks at the progress and challenges around women’s representation and roles in policing globally, and considers what more policing could and should be doing to achieve gender equality and equity.

FEATURE: Police recruitment has become increasingly challenging, particularly in reaction to addressing community under-representation; Policing Insight’s Vernon White, a former Chief of Ottawa Police and RCMP officer, looks back at a recruitment programme in northern Canada’s Nunavut territory, where English Second Language classes and corrective laser eye surgery were among the initiatives employed to increase recruitment from the Inuit community.

FEATURE: This month will see 34 forces across England and Wales joint community and business partners to take part in a series of Safer Business Action days to tackle the significant increase in retail theft and violence against shop workers – an initiative which is also set to be expanded to include the night-time economy, as National Business Crime Centre Lead Supt Patrick Holdaway explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: The latest annual assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), set out in a speech by Director-General Mike Burgess, has downgraded the terror threat level from ‘probable’ to ‘possible’; but Professor Greg Austin of the University of Technology Sydney believes the assessment is confusing, downplaying the threat of right-wing extremism while over-emphasising the threat from some foreign powers.

FEATURE: This month marks the 20th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack on Madrid that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500 others; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks back at Al Qaeda’s bombing of the Spanish capital and how it changed counter-terrorism approaches across Europe, ahead of European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism on 11 March.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Defined as a tactic that uses advanced analytics for proactive crime prevention and supporting investigations, predictive policing identifies intervention targets, solves past crimes, and makes effective crime prevention policies. Due to the adoption of knowledge graph databases and their rigorous nature, such analysis is starting to become commonplace.

INTERVIEW: Channel 4’s To Catch a Copper series revealed shocking incidents of misconduct in Avon and Somerset Police; in a two-part interview with Policing Insight’s James Sweetland, Chief Constable Sarah Crew talks about why she let the cameras in, footage of misconduct by officers that left her feeling “horrified” and “exhausted”, and her views about institutional racism.

ANALYSIS: The latest statistics for England and Wales indicate that levels of recorded crime have fallen to an all-time low, yet there has been little mention of the significant drop by the media, the Government or forces themselves; in this first of two articles, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett looks at the latest crime data and longer-term trends in crime, and why the apparent success in crime reduction remains something of a secret.

OPINION: With the recent report from the Angiolini Inquiry the latest high-profile criticism of UK policing culture, former officer turned police trainer Graham Goulden believes it is time to drop conformity, e-learning and a ‘whack a mole’ approach to misconduct in favour of an active bystandership that will help to instil critical loyalty among colleagues.

FEATURE: The potential of technological advances to transform policing has generated enormous excitement across the sector; but while many in law enforcement are aware of the opportunities offered, much less attention has been paid to the fundamentals needed to actually deliver this kind of tech-driven policing, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explains.

FEATURE: New research by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and social justice group Equally Ours has found that existing ‘myth-busting’ messaging used to refute rape misconceptions actually reinforces those beliefs; instead researchers have called for a ‘suspect-centric’ and values-based approach across the CPS as well as wider criminal justice organisations including the police, the Law Commission and the Home Office, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: A recently published article on Policing Insight regarding modern slavery highlighted concerns about the impact of UK Government reforms on victims of trafficking, but the outcome in Scotland differs significantly to England and Wales, says SNP policing spokesperson Allan Dorans MP, who believes researchers and others need to pay closer attention to the emerging divergence in policing north and south of the border.

FEATURE: A three-month facial recognition trial in Southampton has seen door staff equipped with body-worn cameras to check pub and club goers against a database of excluded offenders; the success of the scheme – described as the first of its kind in the country – has led to suggestions that it could be extended to other areas, as well as to other situations such as preventing those with football banning orders from attending matches, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: When a social media post earlier this month announced Met Police Commander Karen Findlay as the new Assistant Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, the response included a barrage of misogynistic and homophobic comments that drew strong criticism from the leaders of both forces and many other senior officers; former police officer Oliver Laurence, now host of the Protect and Serve podcast, believes more could and should be done to protect officers from online abuse.

FEATURE: Former senior Sussex detective Alison Eaton, and former Cheshire detective Chris Howarth, are working with the Ministry of Defence’s British Peace Support Team (Africa) to deliver ‘train the trainer’ programmes that will help to improve investigative and interviewing skills for officers in sexual and gender-based violence cases in post-conflict countries, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: Police officers in many jurisdictions are trained to be in a “state of heightened alert” when on patrol, both to detect and prevent crime, and for self-preservation; but Prof Jesse Cheng of DePaul University College of Law in Chicago argues that such an approach can lead officers into “addictive hypervigilance” behaviours which significantly increase the unwarranted use of force.

FEATURE: A recent report from the European Commission into the implementation of the Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation has found that EU member states are making good use of the tool, with around 350 orders issued by authorities to service providers to remove online terrorist content, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

FEATURE: A Metropolitan Police initiative which uses a digital triage approach to identify and maximise the potential of digital evidence in stalking, domestic abuse and sexual offences cases has led to investigation times cut by 75% and a 96% conviction rate for cases going to court – prompting calls for the same approach to be used more widely, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: The debate around gender identity principles and their impact on police guidance and processes is proving challenging for UK public sector organisations including policing; but Dr Kath Murray, policing researcher and part of the MurrayBlackburnMackenzie policy analysis collective, believes Police Scotland’s approach to the gender identity debate – driven in part by a risk-averse culture reflecting its difficult start and recent controversies – will prove particularly problematic for the force and the community.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Body cameras have been used in UK policing for nearly two decades, having developed from a small 2005 trial in Devon and Cornwall into a standard tool for officers in the UK and across the world; Stuart Boutell, Director of Evidence Product Management at Motorola Solutions, spoke to Policing Insight about why body cameras are increasingly important and what their new V500 camera can do to help frontline officers, as James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: The UK’s complicated policing landscape of 45 territorial forces alongside specialist services and other national law enforcement agencies has often been regarded as one of the challenges to improving police efficiency and effectiveness; resilience expert Robert Hall, former Head of Analysis at the National Criminal Intelligence Service, argues that now is the time to revisit the potential of a centralised UK police force.