Police effectiveness

INNOVATION: The recent UK police reform white paper outlined Police.AI as a crucial part of the modernisation process; but Vsevolod Shabad, an independent researcher and governance adviser specialising in AI accountability and public sector decision-making, warns that operational gains do not follow automatically from the deployment of AI, and governance models that don’t have the organisational capacity or understanding to accurately scrutinise system outputs and performance offer governance in name only.

FEATURE: A recent report on Best Value in Policing, published jointly by Audit Scotland and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland, has warned that more than 10 years after it was formed – and in the face of increasingly complex challenges – workforce planning in Police Scotland “remains underdeveloped”, with the optimum workforce size, capacity and skillset still to be identified, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Australia, like many other countries, has a long history of organised crime, much of which has flourished by exploiting illicit markets; Deakin University Associate Professor Dr James Martin, and University of Sydney Senior Lecturer Dr Edward Jegasothy, argue that the current government reliance on restrictions, penalties and police powers to disrupt supply and “crush” organised crime is actually more likely to drive it, and suggest a better route would be to bring better regulated markets into the open.

ANALYSIS: As UK policing starts to embrace machine-learning solutions and interest in algorithmic risk assessments grows, Tamara Polajnar, CEO of herEthical AI, explores the existing domestic abuse assessment tools, the importance of understanding how automated risk assessment is used and should be applied, and what steps need to be taken to ensure automation and algorithms can extract vital domestic abuse details and context lost in traditional tick-box methodologies.

PRIZE DRAW WINNER: Results from the UK Police Digital Experience Survey 2025, carried out by Policing Insight and backed by the Home Office, National Police Chiefs’ Council, Police Federation of England & Wales, and the Police Digital Service, will shortly be published, providing a full picture of the digital technology experiences of officers and staff; and for Victim Care Officer Aimee Edwards, the prize draw winner picked from more than 6,600 survey respondents, it also led to a new hi-tech fitness watch.

OPINION: Following on from the publication of the Government’s Road Safety Strategy for England, and calls from some quarters for the measures to go further to prevent road fatalities, Leo Taylor, Director of Drivetech (the AA’s driver training and risk management business), explores what the strategy will mean for drivers and particularly for the role of roads policing, with a greater focus on the use of technology, collaboration with other stakeholders, and the preventative benefits of high-visibility policing.

FEATURE: Research into the impact of the police roll-out of the Right Care, Right Person model of responding to those in mental health crisis in England and Wales suggests that while the approach has made a “considerable contribution” to reducing police contact with those who have mental health problems, in some cases it has left others in frontline positions in “dangerous situations”, and has led to stakeholders “gaming the system” to ensure a police response, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: In the wake of the UK Government’s white paper on police reform, Steve Dodd, a former South Wales Police detective and College of Policing subject matter expert on intelligence professionalisation, argues that policing can immediately adopt community intelligence-led policing methodology as an enabler for the Government’s ‘local to national’ ambitions.

FEATURE: Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons explores Ontario’s Mental Health Crisis Response programme, a virtual reality training model being rolled out to all officers across the province which research suggest can help to de-escalate those mental health crisis interventions, reduce the police use of force, and improve public trusts and confidence in law enforcement.

OPINION: The UK Government’s recent white paper on police reform contained a wide range of ambitious proposals for the future shape of policing; but Dale Peters, Senior Research Director at TechMarketView, warns that unless digital, data and technology developments are an integral part of that reform – rather than a separate workstream – a huge opportunity to structure and equip policing for the years ahead will be lost.

OPINION: New South Wales Police recently announced a six-month trial of drones manufactured by Chinese company DJI; the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Dr John Coyne and James Corera argue that the trial raises broader questions about the risks associated with technologies owned, controlled or influenced by foreign entities, particularly around mission scope, data management, infrastructure connectivity and supply chain resilience.

ANALYSIS: As the dust begins to settle on the proposals laid out in the UK Government’s recent white paper on police reform, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett takes a closer look at the plans, exploring among other things the challenges around force mergers, the creation of a new national police service and the changing constitutional relationship between policing and government, and considers whether the suggested reforms laid out in the paper are simply too radical and too ambitious.

ANALYSIS: Many police forces globally are grappling with the challenge of how they use social media such as X to improve communications and public engagement; research by Dr Usman A. Ojedokun, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Nigeria’s University of Ibadan, explores the success or otherwise of the Nigeria Police Force’s use of X for both engagement and crime reporting, and the reasons behind why some people opted for the social media route to contact the police.

INNOVATION: A study of drug violence dynamics on Merseyside has highlighted the importance of understanding the “informal governance mechanisms” employed by organised crime groups (OCGs), and has led to the creation of a ‘co-operation index’ tool which can help police to more effectively target resources and prevent increased violence between OCGs, as researcher Dr Andrea Giovannetti explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: From complex crimes and tight finances to emerging technology and the public expectations, policing in the UK is facing a wide range of often complex challenges; in an article drawing on her recent Atkins Lecture, Professor Kate Bowers, Director of UCL’s Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, sets out some of those key challenges and, in the wake of the recently published white paper on police reform, suggests some potential ideas to address them.

ANALYSIS: The recent UK police reform proposals include a five-fold increase in the number of live facial recognition vans available to forces, and a significant expansion of the use of the technology; new research by Associate Professor Kay Ritchie of the University of Lincoln and Associate Professor Katie Gray of the University of Reading reveals that while the facial recognition technology used by police is now very accurate, public understanding of how it works and how it is used lags far behind.

FEATURE: With the rapid growth of the internet offering law enforcement and security services huge new quantities of increasingly accessible open-source intelligence (OSINT), AI will play an invaluable role in policing and other organisations’ ability to collate, analyse and provide actionable intelligence from that information, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth explains.

FEATURE: A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee is calling for more transparency over what it described as the “hopelessly outdated” funding formula for police in England and Wales which is restricting forces’ ability to recruit the right staff and roll out new technology, and warns that the Home Office needs better understanding of how policy changes impact on policing resources, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Efforts to address the issue of ‘police culture’ are a regular feature of transformation programmes in law enforcement; organisational psychologist Michael Stephenson argues that most culture change initiatives fail because those creating them fundamentally misunderstand what culture is, its complexity, and the importance of recognising and addressing the role of ‘micro-narratives’ rather than trying to engineer new cultures through imposed idealised values and mindsets.

OPINION: One high-profile element of the UK Government’s proposals on police reform is the introduction of a ‘licence to practise’ for officers; police ethics advisor Montell Neufville argues that, with a ‘four P’s’ approach – based on promote, praise, prevent and punish – and a tiered accountability framework, the license to practice for police could become a license to trust for the public.

OPINION: In their analysis of some of the key measures in the recent UK Government policing reform paper, Leeds Trinity University Associate Professor Jonathan Jackson and Policing Lecturer Adam Stokes argue that commitment to reform will need to be long-term and cross-party to succeed, and that some of the proposals appear to offer macro solutions to micro problems.

OPINION: In the wake of the recent attempted bombing in Perth being declared a terrorist act, and growing concerns around hate crime and extremism, Australia’s Independent National Security Legislation Monitor is now undertaking an inquiry into the country’s legal definition of terrorism; Griffith University Associate Professor Dr Keiran Hardy explores the current definition and related offences, why the wording is so important, and whether the existing legal definition is fit for purpose.

ANALYSIS: The UK Government’s recently published white paper on police reform included proposals for a Senior National Co-ordinator for public order policing, to be based in the new National Police Service; Policing Insight’s Graham Wettone, a former Metropolitan Police officer and public order specialist, explores the proposals outlined in the paper, as well as setting out the need for a wider review of approaches to public order policing as part of the reform process.

OPINION: With UK police reform now firmly on the agenda, ethics specialist Dr Richard Cockbain sets out why policing needs to shift its focus from the risk-averse approach of minimising failure at all costs to recognising, articulating and learning from successes, and the challenges around culture, structure and incentive that will need to be addressed if reform is to deliver positive transformation.