Crime

INNOVATION: A new film produced to help police and other professionals recognise cuckooing and understand the perspectives of ‘alpha victims’ – young victims who go on to become offenders themselves – is due to be trialled by police forces shortly, as the latest addition to a wider toolkit to help practitioners identify and act on the risks and vulnerabilities around the issue, as Dr Laura Bainbridge, Associate Professor in Criminal Justice at the University of Leeds, explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: This month New Zealand Police begin to rollout roadside drug testing of drivers under new laws passed by the Government earlier this year; but Professor Joseph Boden of the University of Otago warns that a test which measures presence rather than impairment risks confusing detection with prevention, and may do little to make New Zealand’s roads any safer.

FEATURE: A recently foiled plot to assassinate Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever is the latest attempt by terrorists to use 3D printers and drones to create potentially deadly weapons to carry out attacks; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at examples of terrorists employing such technology, the availability of components and manuals to undertake such operations, and what can be done to tackle these threats.

OPINION: As the first digital natives of AI-fluent Generations Alpha and Beta come of age, law enforcement agencies and policymakers will face an unprecedented criminal landscape shaped by tech tools, hyper-personalized algorithms, and borderless digital worlds; Cognyte’s Yakir Bitterman, a Webint Product Owner and open-source intelligence specialist, explores the behavioral trends among digital natives, and looks ahead at the changing and challenging misinformation threat landscape that awaits them.

FEATURE: A recent report by the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre which explores the responses to family violence and domestic abuse in Victoria Police and Greater Manchester Police has highlighted the continuing challenges around successfully implementing support and change programmes for perpetrators of domestic abuse when services for victim/survivors are still inadequate, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: Policing and artificial intelligence (AI) experts from the UK, Australia, US, Canada and the UAE came together recently to explore international insights into policing in the age of AI, highlighting the challenges around improving tech capability, overcoming fragmentation, the need to engage and explain to the public and police staff, and the dangers of eroding police discretion, as well as the increasing threats from the criminal use of AI, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the worrying rise of the 764 online network, which targets teenagers and promotes involvement in a range of damaging activities including abuse and exploitation, satanic and neo-Nazi extremism, and online and offline violence, and the efforts to tackle the growth of the network.

OPINION: This week saw the launch of the United Nation’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign, with a focus on tackling the digital and online abuse of women and girls; the University of Leicester’s Dr Sarah Jane Fox, Co-Director of the Institute for Digital Culture, explores the messages behind the UNiTE campaign, what it is hoping to achieve, and the parallels between offline and online misogyny and abuse.

INNOVATION: Earlier this year Police Now launched a new specialist economic crime programme, recruiting 12 graduates to join City of London Police and become detectives within two years; Policing Insight’s James Sweetland spoke with City of London Deputy Commissioner Nik Adams, Police Now CEO Kurtis Christoforides, and three graduates on the programme to learn more.

ANALYSIS: Following the announcement earlier this month that the role of police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales will be abolished in 2028, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett looks at the background to the decision, reaction to it, and the challenges that will arise – from potential force boundary changes to the likelihood of increased politicisation of governance – which mean that the end of the PCC experiment is going to be much more than just an administrative change.

INTERVIEW: Since Krissy Barrett’s appointment last month as Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), she has been setting out some of the challenges facing the organisation in the current policing landscape; she recently spoke to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons about her aims for leading the force to meet the evolving threats, the AFP’s unique technical and collaborative capabilities, and her ambition to ensure the AFP is “the best police agency in the world to work in”.

ANALYSIS: Attrition rates in UK rape cases have prompted considerable concerns, but data analysis led by Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Jo Lovett of London Metropolitan University (as part of the Operation Soteria Data Pillar) has highlighted that significant numbers of police-recorded rapes originated through victim/survivors discussions with officers or the DASH assessment process, with victims having no intention to report the crime – a process described as ‘telling not reporting’ – and subsequently do not support the investigation.

INTERVIEW: Developed by an academic team at the University of Sheffield, the Sexual Trafficking Identification Matrix (STIM) assesses adverts on adult service websites and analyses factors such as the photographs, language and details used to help law enforcement identify victims and perpetrators of human trafficking or sexual exploitation, as Dr Xavier L’Hoiry explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: Following months of headlines and community concerns around youth violence in Victoria and its capital Melbourne, the State Government recently announced plans to create a specialist team focused on early intervention and mentorship, similar to the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit; Senior Criminology Lecturer Dr Joel McGregor of Swinburne University of Technology believes a well-funded, multi-agency, public health approach such as this could deliver long-term change.

OPINION: Despite an estimated 4.8 million people being forced into the sex trade each year, surveys indicate just 4% of law enforcement personnel believe human trafficking is a problem in their community; research by Dr Dara Mojtahedi, University of Huddersfield Associate Professor in Forensic and Investigative Psychology, found that myths around the scale of the issue and perceptions of victims are damaging those victims and creating barriers to tackling the problem, and suggests steps to dispel those myths.

FEATURE: A recent report into the UK Government’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee has warned that for the Guarantee to succeed, there will need to be better training for neighbourhood policing recruits, a reduction in officer abstractions from neighbourhood policing teams, and change in the perception of the neighbourhood role to recognise it as a specialism, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: The latest review from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warns that the “opaque” nature of computer technology is leaving both state and organisational systems vulnerable to cyber-attack; the review also set out the steps that organisations can take to increase system transparency and reduce risks, as well as highlighting the range of initiatives the NCSC is currently delivering to improve resilience and target cybercriminals, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasing role in policing – both in tackling crime and improving efficiency – with suggestions that it could also be key to improving public trust and confidence; but Leeds Trinity University Associate Professor Jonathan Jackson and PCDA Programme Lead Katie Oxley argue that while AI may offer valuable advantages, public trust and confidence also depend on the quality of interaction with individual officers, so ‘street craft’ and communication skills remain crucial.

FEATURE: Following this month’s EMPACT day of action across Europe to tackle human trafficking, co-ordinated by Europol, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth explores the scale of the problem as well as the efforts of EU members to combat labour exploitation, and takes a closer look at the background and vital role that Europol now plays in leading and supporting operations to target and investigate transnational European crime.

INTERVIEW: With retail crime reaching “unprecedented levels”, Superintendent Lisa Maslen, the lead of the National Business Crime Centre, is looking to build a repository of best practice and urging forces to “borrow with pride” in an effort to tackle offending that is “organised, prolific and impactive on us all”, as she explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

FEATURE: Criminal justice campaign group Revolving Doors is calling for a new cross-departmental government diversion framework across the UK to tackle the “revolving door cohort” – low-level offenders who repeatedly come into contact with the justice system because of unmet health and social needs, generating a total socio-economic cost of more than £5bn each year, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Research from the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) is spearheading survivor-informed change throughout operational policing and the criminal courts; NAPAC Chief Executive Gabrielle Shaw outlines how the research offers an alternative approach to justice which looks beyond criminal conviction, prioritising support for survivors and building a system that provides accessible routes to both formal and personal justice outcomes.

FEATURE: With the frequency and severity of wildfires increasing across Europe, a series of innovative new projects has been launched to strengthen wildfire management and readiness, offering valuable guidance to fire services, other first responders, and police and fire commissioners alike, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

OPINION: Recent headlines around the Pacific island nations’ role in drug production and trafficking have seen comparisons made with Latin America’s cartel-dominated countries; but John Coyne, Director of National Security Programs at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, warns that the reality is much more nuanced, and that the way to tackle the ‘smugglers haven’ is through continued partnership and collaboration between Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands.