Police forces - United Kingdom

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.

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: 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 a continuing focus on diversity and inclusion across policing, specialist units in particular remain stubbornly homogeneous; new research within tactical and firearms teams by Dr Ashleigh Bennett, an occupational psychologist with extensive experience in policing and the public sector, highlights the significant cultural barriers officers encounter within these teams, and suggests steps forces should be taking to ensure inclusion becomes simply a matter of how policing operates.

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.

OPINION: Following the announcement by UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last week of the abolition of police and crime commissioners as a “failed experiment”, Ron Winch, Associate Professor in Policing at Birmingham City University, considers whether this current decision could indicate a more radical reform agenda to be unveiled in the forthcoming policing white paper, including the replacement of the 43-force model with the introduction of ‘mega-forces’.

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.

OPINION: Police forces globally face continuing modernisation challenges – with technology a key element in driving change – but the employee experience is often neglected in the transformation process; Phillip Bland, Global Government Advisor at experience management specialists Qualtrics, sets out how forces can ensure the frontline employee voice is heard, measured and acted upon in the police modernisation process.

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.

OPINION: While gender inequality in policing and the damage caused by a misogynistic culture have featured regularly in reports, research and media discourse, attempts to tackle the problem appear to have had little success; Nicola Harrison, a former police officer and Senior lecturer in Policing and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University, argues that to address these issues, culture change cannot be mandated but must be cultivated from the ground up.

OPINION: Previous surveys by the Police Federation of England and Wales revealed the impact on female officers of experiencing the menopause while working in policing, and the scale of the problem; now new research by PC Beverley Beck of Dorset Police has highlighted how the institutional neglect of menopause contributes to the early exit of talented and experienced female officers, as well as the good practice underway in some forces to address the issues and support officers.

OPINION: South Yorkshire Police Detective Chief Inspector Aneela Khalil-Khan recently completed the Senior Leadership Programme at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia; in this article she shares some of the key lessons from the experience, including the contrast and similarities between UK and US policing, and the opportunities for learning for policing in both countries.

FEATURE: An initiative led by Leicestershire Police – working with fast-food chain McDonalds, the local authority, St John’s Ambulance and other partners – has seen serious violence in parts of the city’s might-time economy cut by half, leading to a global problem-solving in policing award and the prospect of the programme being rolled out in other parts of the country, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INTERVIEW: Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Chief Constable Sir Stephen Watson has been credited with turning round the performance of the force since he took over the top job in 2021, as well as being vocal about the importance of getting the basics right in policing; he spoke to Policing Insight’s James Sweetland about the need to focus on professionalism and impartiality, developing a proactive mindset among officers, GMP’s approach to neighbourhood policing, and the challenges and benefits of a National Centre of Policing.

FEATURE: This week’s report published by the Environment and Climate Change Committee highlights the damage caused by organised waste crime in England, the “woeful” level of successful prosecutions, and the apparent lack of interest shown by the police in fulfilling their role; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the findings of the report, as well as European efforts to tackle the issue.

INTERVIEW: After leading Merseyside Police for just over four years, Serena Kennedy recently stepped down from her role as the Chief Constable of the fifth largest force in England and Wales; speaking with Policing Insight’s James Sweetland shortly before her departure, she reflected on the changing nature of police leadership, debates about national reform, and shared her perspective on what the planned new National Centre of Policing (NCoP) should look like.

FEATURE: An Inspectorate report into the UK National Crime Agency’s National Data Exploitation Capability (NDEC) is warning that the Agency risks missing vital intelligence due in part to a mounting “technical debt” that means it spends much of its annual IT budget updating hundreds of legacy systems rather than investing in long-term technology solutions, with NDEC staff using outdated and obsolete IT when trying to work on large volumes of data, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INNOVATION: As International Control Room Week gets underway, Essex Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper, the National Police Chiefs’ Council Contact Operations Lead, outlines the development of AI Post-Call Analysis, which produces concise, easy-to-read summaries of all incoming control room contact and automatically categorises calls by topic to enable rapid retrieval and analysis – one of a tranche of technical innovations designed to help forces “move from overwhelmed to empowered”.

OPINION: With continuing UK protests fuelled by polarised views presenting ongoing problems for policing, former South Wales Police detective Steve Dodd, a subject matter expert on intelligence professionalisation and advocate of the community intelligence-led policing methodology (CILPM), explores how CILPM could enhance both the delivery and impact of the new neighbourhood policing focus, and feed into addressing the challenges of policing a fractured society.