Technology and equipment

INTERVIEW: UKROEd is responsible for the management of the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS); Chief Executive Ruth Purdie, formerly a police officer for 30 years, spoke to Policing Insight about what the scheme has delivered since its first online courses were offered in 2020, and what role driver re-education can play in helping to sustain a long-term reduction in death and serious injury on our roads.

INTERVIEW: With a number of Caribbean countries still relying on handwritten crime records, a new US/UN initiative has helped these paradise islands to develop their digital capability and crime data analyst role; Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend spoke to Arizona State University Professor Charles Katz – one of the leaders of the programme – to find out more.

ANALYSIS: As UK emergency services look to learn lessons from the Manchester Arena Inquiry to improve crisis response, a new European project involving partners from eight countries is using data sets from previous emergencies and disasters to identify strategies that can strengthen disaster resilience at a local, national and international level, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

OPINION: In Australia, a growing number of Facebook pages dedicated to identifying the locations of police traffic operations are enabling drug users to avoid detection during roadside drug-testing initiatives; but Research Assistant Laura Mills, Professor James Freeman and Dr Verity Truelove of the University of the Sunshine Coast believe that regardless of Facebook, there is a fundamental need to increase motorists’ perceptions of being caught for drug driving.

OPINION: Despite many more people dying on the roads than from terrorism or knife crime, roads policing resources have been significantly cut back over the past decade; now the Police Foundation has called for roads policing to be made a Strategic Policing Requirement, and a new Road Safety Commissioner appointed, in an effort to reverse the de-prioritisation of roads policing, as Police Foundation Director Rick Muir explains.

FEATURE: The surge in Canadian girls and young women becoming victims of technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) – as well as the high-profile suicides of two young females bullied as a result of TFSV – have prompted calls for new laws to offer greater protection; Dr Anthony Fong, Global Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto, explores the impact of the crime, and the legal options available.

INTERVIEW: With organised crime and illegal financial transactions increasingly reliant on digital data and online activity, the work of the digital forensics team at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK has become crucial in the fight against fraud and other crimes: Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend spoke to HMRC’s Head of Digital Forensics Colin Smith to find out more.

INNOVATION: A new DNA technique being pioneered by the Australian Federal Police uses Massively Parallel Sequencing to predict gender, age, eye colour, hair colour and bio-geographical ancestry – with new markers being identified for traits such as facial metrics or physical stature – in a breakthrough that could help investigators identify human remains as well as potential suspects, as Policing Insight Deputy Editor Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a gamechanger in law enforcement, but only if there is confidence in its deployment both inside and outside of the sector; Steve Ainsworth, Executive Director of Public Safety at NEC Software Solutions UK, argues the case for more transparency around the use of AI in policing.

ANALYSIS: Australia has a lengthy and costly 40-year history of providing assistance to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, but the offer recently accepted by the Islands’ Government of officers and equipment from China has raised some strategic concerns; Gordon Peake and Dr Graeme Smith of the Australian National University explore the Australian Federal Police’s capacity-building efforts to date, as well as China’s moves to extend their policing reach in the Pacific.

ANALYSIS: The high-profile media investigations into the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers and others brought the issues of illegal financial activity and money laundering to a wider global audience; now a new Europol report has offered a law enforcement perspective on the use of international finance systems for criminal gain, and Policing Insight’s Chris Allen reports.

LONG READ: The use of naloxone by officers to reverse the effects of opioid overdoses is being trialled by several UK forces, having saved hundreds of lives in the US and Canada, and debates are ongoing in Australia and New Zealand – but not everyone believes it’s the best way forward; Policing Insight Contributing Editor Tina Orr Munro takes an in-depth look at the impact the medication can have, how and where it is being used, and the barriers to a wider roll-out.

OPINION: It’s 10 years since regulation of the private investigations industry in the UK was last considered; Policing Insight contributor Gareth Bryon takes a look at the calls for regulation, the current state of the sector, and whether a revisit of a regulatory framework could professionalise the industry.

ANALYSIS: Despite strong community rules and safeguards, some social media platforms remain a haven for a range of illegality, including the illicit trade in wildlife; University of Cape Town Research Associate Dr Rowan Martin, University of Oxford Senior Research Fellow Dr Amy Hinsley, and Dr Ana Nuno, Research Fellow at Nova School of Business and Economics, believe that trade can only be tackled effectively if experts, big tech and regulators adopt a united approach.

INNOVATION: The latest cybersecurity research and innovation opportunities published under the Horizon Europe programme offer police forces the chance to improve operational cyber monitoring and threat detection; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the opportunities available, and encourages UK forces to make the most of the funding available to strengthen security and detection through collaboration with EU partners.

ANALYSIS: Collaboration is increasingly the approach of public sector service delivery, yet common insights highlight that collaborative efforts face a number of challenges that can lead to failure or discontinuation; University of Southampton Lecturer Dr Fatema Zaghloul draws on her current research to explore the emerging challenges and essential elements in developing and maintaining collaborative IT/IS projects across UK police forces.

FEATURE: While some criminal activity has fallen during the pandemic, serious crimes have continued, which means so has the work of crime scene investigators; Paola Magni, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science at Murdoch University, looks at the challenges of protecting CSI teams from COVID-19, and discusses some of her recent research on the steps agencies can take to keep staff safe.

INTERVIEW: The opportunity to spend a year as a White House Fellow gave LAPD officer Sgt Brian Churchill an incredible insight into leadership, one which he wanted to use to improve leadership training within the force; when the impact of Covid then shifted all learning online, the development of LAPD’s University app and online Leadership Program was the ideal solution, as he explained to Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend.

OPINION: Police forces both in the UK and internationally are increasingly equipping officers with overdose reversal medication such as naloxone, in an effort to cut the catastrophic numbers of drug-related deaths; drugs policing expert Ben Twomey, who wrote the policy for the first force in the UK to carry the medication, writes about what it means for the war on drugs.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Registration has opened for the 2022 BAPCO Conference & Exhibition, taking place at the Coventry Building Society Arena, 8-9 March of this year.

FEATURE: The latest report on the policing of the pandemic in the UK has suggested expanding the ‘4Es’ approach to other law enforcement activities, investing the additional capability from Operation Uplift into neighbourhood policing, and improving national co-ordination and workforce planning, as some of the key lessons from Covid policing; Policing Insight Deputy Editor Sarah Gibbons takes a closer look at the report.

FEATURE: The use of learning analytics to measure, collect and analyse data from police learners – with a view to optimising programmes and improving the development environment – could revolutionise policing learning, as Dr Matthew Jones and Prof Bart Rienties of the Open University explain in this latest in a series of articles on police CPD.

ANALYSIS: While banking and financial transactions move increasingly towards digital platforms, criminals are resurrecting a more traditional fraud – bank check theft – to build bitcoin profits and steal identities, as Georgia State University Criminology and Criminal Justice Professor David Maimon explains.

ANALYSIS: With online communication – and social media in particular – highlighting society’s growing prevalence of abuse and the incitement to hatred and violence, the UK’s proposed Online Safety Bill has been welcomed by many as a step towards tackling big tech’s ‘land of the lawless’; Policing Insight contributor Gareth Bryon looks at the background to the Bill, and some of the measures set to be introduced in 2022.