Police effectiveness

INNOVATION: Automation and digitisation are delivering increased efficiency and other benefits across wider society, and there are significant potential gains for UK policing and the criminal justice system; police and technology advisor Paul Kennedy, and former Detective Inspector Tina Macleod, an out-of-court resolutions (OoCRs) specialist, explore some of the opportunities arising for policing and criminal justice across a range of areas, and take a closer look at how the use of OoCRs could be transformed by the new technology.

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: Speaking at a recent webinar hosted by the Canadian Association of Police Governance, Police Research Lab Director Professor Craig Bennell highlighted the importance of an “informed public” if policing leaders and policymakers are to base practice and decision-making on data drawn from public surveys; he also reiterated the need for “positive public contact”, the value of factual clarity, and the benefits of a calmer police communications response to major incidents, as Policing Insights Christine Townsend reports.

INTERVIEW: Following the Government’s announcement last month that the role of police and crime commissioner will be abolished in 2028, Emily Spurrell, Chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, spoke to Policing Insight’s Ian Weinfass about why she believes the Home Office is wrong to overhaul police governance in England and Wales, why it will not save the money cited, and how it could damage other areas of policing.

OPINION: Despite growing momentum across society for the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI), policing – like many other sectors – is proving to be big on ambition but slow on adoption of the new technology; Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO of Content Guru, explores the reasons behind the slow adoption, the challenges around public trust and confidence, and how the successful introduction of AI into critical healthcare communications could provide lessons for policing.

FEATURE: A new tutor constable training programme launched by the College of Policing for forces in England and Wales aims to professionalise a role that is often overlooked, while delivering public benefits by ensuring new recruits receive the right guidance, and improve retention and cut costs through reducing the number of early-in-service resignations, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: An update on Police Scotland’s Policing Together programme, launched in 2021 to deliver “long-term tangible impact” on a wide variety of equality and diversity issues, reveals improvements on a range of inclusivity and community representation measures, higher levels of satisfaction with police-public interactions, and reduction in the use of force, officer injuries and complaints, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ANALYSIS: Policing is looking to technology to establish new channels for public contact, but the impact on public-police encounters has until now been little studied; a three-year research project by SIPR Director Professor Liz Aston, Senior Criminology Lecturer Dr Helen Wells, Criminology Lecturer Dr Estelle Clayton, UCL Professor Ben Bradford, and Criminology Professor Megan O’Neill, has highlighted valuable learning on a range of issues including accessibility, the importance of human interaction, and confidence in policing.

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.

INTERVIEW: Essex Chief Constable BJ Harrington, one of the longer-serving chief constables in England and Wales, spoke recently to Policing Insight’s James Sweetland about avoiding “distractions” in delivering policing to the public, facing down criticism in relation to controversial issues such as the Epping asylum protests, and why local control and connections are still more effective in service delivery than “big is beautiful” centralisation.

ANALYSIS: Following last month’s announcement by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood of a review of the UK legislation around demonstrations and assemblies, Policing Insight’s Graham Wettone, a former Metropolitan Police officer and public order specialist, looks at the background to the current Public Order Act 1986, the finer details of the legislation, and the challenges it presents for the policing of protests that the review will hopefully address.

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.

OPINION: In the latest in a regular series of articles from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), Bedfordshire PCC John Tizard, the APCC’s Joint Lead on Performance, Data and New Tech Ethics, looks at the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and technology in policing, and highlights the steps he has taken in his own force around accountability and governance, which could help achieve the APCC’s aim of a roadmap towards a strong ethical governance framework with PCCs at the centre.

FEATURE: The recent Building Bridges evidence-based policing conference in Ontario showcased efforts by policing to correct the mismatch between how crime is experienced and how it is measured, with a harm-focused framework pioneered by Barrie Police Service and London Police Service’s new gamification approach to hot-sport policing leading the way, as Policing Insight’s Matthew Wood reports.