UCL COVID-19 SERIES: With children in England expected to fully return to school in September, Dr Mandy Shaw from Leeds Beckett University considers how bullying has continued during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, and how the risk of this can be managed within the school environment.
OPINION: In what is believed to be a first for the United Arab Emirates, a new multi-agency child protection centre for victims of physical and sexual abuse has opened in Sharjah. Deloitte Middle East’s Public Safety lead, Andrew Morley, explains the context to this move, and what ‘Kanaf’ will hope to achieve.
OPINION: The recent stop of London MP Dawn Butler under the Road Traffic Act (RTA), and the media storm which ensued, once again brought the issue of police legitimacy into the headlines; Montell Neufville believes amending the RTA could improve interactions with the public.
13th August 2020
ONLINE EVENT ADVERT: Skills for Justice invite you to join them virtually for the first interactive Organisation Development and Changing Practice event on Thursday 20th August 2020
OPINION: The nature of policing is complex and fast moving, as highlighted in the recent Police Foundation Strategic Review. Ahead of their forthcoming one-day online event on changing practice, Skills for Justice Consultant Toby Lindsay highlights the need for effective leaders to master adaptive challenges.
ANALYSIS: In the wake of the National Crime Agency's successful global operation against organised crime, Policing Insight contributor Andrew Staniforth discusses how law enforcement agencies are combatting the cartels and whether this is working.
12th August 2020
OPINION: UK police forces are under constant pressure to deliver more services with limited resources. IBM Services Associate Partner Luke Mundy explores how augmenting existing human resource with a digital, automated workforce could increase capacity, freeing up officers and staff to concentrate on nuanced, skilled, high-value tasks.
11th August 2020
OPINION: New Policing Insight Editor Keith Potter on the success of the website to date, the challenges moving forward, and the importance of creating 'engaging, thought provoking and informative' content
UCL COVID-19 SERIES: Dr Kartikeya Tripathi and Professor Claudia Cooper from the UCL Jill Dando Institute examine how the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime has increased for older people during lockdown and how this threat can be tackled.
11th August 2020
ANALYSIS: Last week saw the release of Australia’s long-awaited Cyber Security Strategy, and a pledge to spend A$1.67 billion over the next decade. Damien Manuel, Director of the Centre for Cyber Security Solutions at Australia's Deakin University, looks at how the funding will be used – and who will be the main winners and losers.
OPINION: Community scrutiny panels (CSPs) can help to ensure the use of stop and search is fair and proportionate, says Nina Champion, Director of Criminal Justice Alliance – but only if they are representative of their communities, allowed to operate independently, and given the necessary funding, training and access to data.
OPINION: The push for greater efficiency and effectiveness has seen UK police forces increasingly collaborating on areas such as procurement, finance and HR with neighbouring colleagues and public sector partners. John O'Halloran of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) highlights some of the key considerations to ensure back-office unification brings significant benefits rather than additional problems.
OPINION: PCCs (and PFCCs) have a statutory duty to consult the public before drawing up plans and setting out priorities. But in an era of social distancing, greater public scrutiny and an increasing appetite for legal challenge, successfully fulfilling that statutory public consultation duty is more complex than ever, as Anna Collins of the Consultation Institute explains.
INTERVIEW: Dr Holger Nitsch, coordinator of the new European Commission DroneWISE innovation project, explains exclusively to Policing Insight the threat from the terrorist use of drones, and the measures being developed across Europe to support the emergency services' response to a potential terrorist drone attack.
OPINION: Recent reports from HMICFRS and PACTS have highlighted the important role of roads policing in tackling crime and public safety. But Charlie Norman, managing director of road safety organisation DriveTech, believes that with competing demands for limited resources, partnerships will be the key to meeting often complex challenges.
ANALYSIS: Launched three years ago, Merseyside Police's innovative Evidence-Based Policing (EBP) Knowledge Hub hosts around 150 pieces of research; in 2019 it staged its first event, showcasing some of the research and their practical applications. PS Andrew Fielding explores the presentations and the benefits of EBP to policing.
ANALYSIS: The speed with which coronavirus legislation was introduced, and its reach, led to calls for additional human rights-based scrutiny of the emergency powers. Solicitor Advocate John Scott QC, who chaired Scotland's independent advisory group on the issue, explains how the group was established and operated, some of the lessons learned, and how Scotland led the way.
OPINION: When it comes to the mental health and wellbeing of officers, former police leader turned development coach Gareth Davies believes there's a significant gap between discussions about the issues, and meaningful action or appreciation of their impact. The first step towards closing that gap is to create a culture where officers can have difficult conversations.
4th August 2020
Job advertisement: Police Lecturer vacancies at Babcock International for their new flagship contract partnering with several Higher Education Institutes across London to deliver the new Metropolitan Police Service Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) framework.
OPINION: With routine stops escalating into major public order situations, people targeting and baiting officers, and the tension between police and policed now 'palpable', former Ch. Supt. Owen West – a crowd policing specialist – fears the UK is on the brink of serious summer disorder; yet officers must avoid developing a siege mentality.
IN THE NEWS: 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 - plus a short guide outlining how serving police officers and staff can get access, free, to many of the articles listed through the National Police Library. You do not need to be a member of the College to access its library.
4th August 2020
ANALYSIS: In October 2018, Canada became the first G7 and G20 nation to regulate cannabis. Professor Bill Bogart of the University of Windsor discusses the recent report by Transform, the British think tank focused on the reform of drug laws, which argues that Canada’s programme to legalise and regulate cannabis has gone well.
