Technology and equipment

FEATURE: London Policing College’s recent Policing in the Time of Pandemic conference included a focus on COVID-19’s impact on domestic abuse and harmful practices; Polly Harrar, founder of The Sharan Project and Joint Chair of the London Harmful Practices Working Group, highlights the key messages from the workshops held ahead of the conference, and the lessons for policing moving forwards.

INTERVIEW: A 24/7 digital contact management system being pioneered by Surrey Police could improve relations with reluctant to engage communities and strengthen neighbourhood policing; Chief Constable Gavin Stephens tells Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons how the digital approach could help to rebuild public trust.

INTERVIEW: Keeping concealed and prohibited items out of operational police premises is a major security challenge, amplified by COVID-19 social distancing requirements. Professor Garik Markarian, CEO of Rinicom Ltd, explains to Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth the aims of Project Artifact, which advances non-invasive security screening to detect the hostile intentions of visitors, contractors and suppliers, as well as insider threats.

FEATURE: A review of 30 research studies into the effects of body-worn cameras on the behaviour of both officers and the public suggests that there is ’substantial uncertainty’ regarding the potential benefits of the new technology, other than in reducing unwarranted complaints against police, reports Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

FEATURE: Police Rewired, the volunteer civic-tech community behind the annual policing hackathon Hack the Police, ran a new event this year – Hack Hate; organisation co-founder Lewis Westbury explains a bit more about Police Rewired, and how the hackathon against hate worked.

FEATURE: Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports on a new EU border security and surveillance system which could see unmanned, automated robots becoming the eyes and ears of a new Fortress Europe

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: On Tuesday 15th December at 11am EST / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET, NICE will be hosting a Global Digital Transformation of Policing and Criminal Justice Virtual Roundtable. It will be joined by senior Police and Criminal Justice representatives from the UK and the US who will each provide insight into their digital transformation journeys, during this free-to-attend event.

INTERVIEW: With a force area covering 2.5 million square kilometres – the world's largest non-federated jurisdiction – Western Australia Police face unique challenges, and enforcing COVID-19 restrictions was certainly one of them; Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to WA Deputy Commissioner Gary Dreibergs about the pioneering, police-led app that made all the difference.

OPINION: There is increasing pressure on public and private sector organisations to ensure data security, in an era of expanding and evolving cyber crime; Susan Brown, Founder and CEO of specialists Zortrex, believes the concept of tokenisation – already used widely in financial services – could bring benefits for policing.

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: In this latest in the series of COVID-19 briefing papers published by UCL’s Jill Dando Institute, Professor Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International looks at the potential frauds emerging from the pandemic, and what the public, businesses and law enforcement agencies can do to deter the fraudsters.

INNOVATION: Big data can provide powerful insights into policing and improve performance, but getting it wrong leads to unreliable conclusions and poor policies. In the second of two articles, Professor Tom Kirchmaier, Director of Policing and Crime at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics (LSE), outlines his team’s work with British policing and some of the important principles of using big data.

OPINION: Following a recent three-year pilot, provisions in a new UK Domestic Abuse Bill will pave the way for mandatory lie-detector testing of high-risk domestic abuse perpetrators; but Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth argues that new scientific test techniques would be more effective and appropriate than using outdated polygraph methods.

FEATURE: With online extremists migrating to increasingly niche platforms, law enforcement is having to work harder to monitor and tackle hate crime and extremist activity; but as online intelligence experts Franck Znaty and Dr Lewys Brace told delegates at this year's NPCC Internet, Intelligence and Investigation conference, targeting such activity may be challenging but can still be successful.

FEATURE: In our continuing series supporting new police degree entry recruits, Policing Insight’s Academic Editor Dr Carina O’Reilly takes a final look at evidence-based policing, and the challenges of taking EBP forwards from research theory to embedded, applied practice within policing organisations.

INTERVIEW: Incorporating new technology, collaborating with partners and maintaining social legitimacy are just some of the challenges facing Chile’s PDI in the future, explains Director General Héctor Espinosa, in the second half of his two-part interview with Policing Insight.

FEATURE: Online child sexual exploitation is a growing crime with horrific consequences around the world, but a global task force led by the FBI is making significant inroads, catching offenders and rescuing children; Policing Insight Contributing Editor Tina Orr Munro reports from the UK’s Internet Intelligence and Investigations Conference on the success of the VCACITF.

INTERVIEW: Policing has had a tough 12 months; but if the challenges are difficult now, what scenarios will law enforcement agencies face in 10 or 20 years time? Policing Insight Contributing Editor Tina Orr Munro spoke to Odette Meli of the Australian Federal Police about her work on futures thinking and forward planning for policing.

FEATURE: When a convicted rapist admitted that he planned to hunt down and attack the same woman again once he was released from prison, defensive profiling helped to protect his terrified victim; Policing Insight Contributing Editor Tina Orr Munro reports from the first day of the UK’s Internet Intelligence and Investigations Conference on this invaluable internet-based approach to safeguarding victims and witnesses.

ANALYSIS: Police use of stop and search has been widely scrutinised and regularly debated; but as Dr Mike Rowe of the University of Liverpool and Dr Geoff Pearson of the University of Manchester discovered during a seven-year study of two police forces, ‘stop and accounts’ and vehicle stops receive much less attention, yet can be just as damaging if used disproportionately.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Harder to say and even harder to achieve, interoperability has long been the bugbear of many industries with policing perhaps at the top of the tree. Boyd Mulvey discusses what can be done to drive integration and interoperability forward for a more joined up approach to policing.

INTERVIEW: Chilean policing and society in general have undergone significant changes since the 1990s, and the country’s PDI police force is now regarded by citizens as one of the country’s must trusted and reliable institutions; in this two-part interview, Policing Insight spoke to PDI Director General Héctor Espinosa about the work of the force, the challenges it faces – nationally and internationally – and what the future may hold.

OPINION: In recent years major changes to policing have included a transformation of recruitment practises that have changed the workforce demographic; Ian Lithgow, IBM’s Partner responsible for Talent and Transformation, explains how a more strategic approach to workforce planning can make a difference.

OPINION: Following the recent HM Inspectorate report into roads policing, and the current Department for Transport review of the issue, roads policing in the UK is back under the spotlight; DriveTech Managing Director Charlie Norman welcomes the renewed focus on a crucial policing issue, and shares his company’s response to the review consultation.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Police services face the challenge of a growing multitude of communications channels used by the public, with engagements across social media, web and voice channels. Steve Norris, Police Market Director for Salesforce UK, discusses how these touchpoints can be married together for greater efficiency and insight.