Technology and equipment

OPINION: UK police forces are under constant pressure to deliver more services with limited resources. IBM Services Associate Partner Luke Mundy explores how augmenting existing human resource with a digital, automated workforce could increase capacity, freeing up officers and staff to concentrate on nuanced, skilled, high-value tasks.

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: Dr Kartikeya Tripathi and Professor Claudia Cooper from the UCL Jill Dando Institute examine how the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime has increased for older people during lockdown and how this threat can be tackled.

OPINION: Community scrutiny panels (CSPs) can help to ensure the use of stop and search is fair and proportionate, says Nina Champion, Director of Criminal Justice Alliance – but only if they are representative of their communities, allowed to operate independently, and given the necessary funding, training and access to data.

INTERVIEW: Dr Holger Nitsch, coordinator of the new European Commission DroneWISE innovation project, explains exclusively to Policing Insight the threat from the terrorist use of drones, and the measures being developed across Europe to support the emergency services' response to a potential terrorist drone attack.

OPINION: Recent reports from HMICFRS and PACTS have highlighted the important role of roads policing in tackling crime and public safety. But Charlie Norman, managing director of road safety organisation DriveTech, believes that with competing demands for limited resources, partnerships will be the key to meeting often complex challenges.

ANALYSIS: Launched three years ago, Merseyside Police's innovative Evidence-Based Policing (EBP) Knowledge Hub hosts around 150 pieces of research; in 2019 it staged its first event, showcasing some of the research and their practical applications. PS Andrew Fielding explores the presentations and the benefits of EBP to policing.

INTERVIEW: In the second part of our interview with former CACP Executive Director Bill Moore, the veteran officer explores key issues including the role of the Chiefs’ Association, the legalisation of cannabis, and how analytics may have an important part to play in shaping the future of Canadian policing.

INTERVIEW: A week after Paddy Tipping took over as Chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Home Secretary announced a review of the role of PCCs. Undaunted, the former MP has welcomed the news, and believes the APCC has key role to play in promoting good practice, securing funding, and pushing for 'cultural change' on inclusion and diversity.

Opinion: It's 15 years since the 7/7 bombings took place in London. Policing Insight Contributor Andrew Staniforth looks back at the atrocity and the immediate aftermath, and how it shaped counter-terrorism policing.

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic Dr Michael Frith from the UCL Jill Dando Institute discusses residential burglaries and how lockdown restrictions have forced offenders to change their tactics.

Analysis: The militarisation of police departments in the United States has been a feature of domestic law enforcement since 2001. Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at Emmanuel College Tom Nolan examines the impact of this approach on civil disorder.

OPINION: With the Coronavirus dramatically accelerating discussions around digitising police legacy systems, Ben Austen of technology consultancy Tisski outlines some of the main benefits – for both the police and the public – of improving cloud-based digital evidence and forensic case management systems.

Analysis: The latest in our Report Watch series summarises HMICFRS inspection of police forces' call-handling and contact management centres in 2018/19

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: Dr Rick Brown and Amelia Hickman from the Australian Institute of Criminology consider how online gambling can be a precursor to offending behaviours such as fraud and domestic violence and how this risk has increased during lockdown.

Analysis: The latest in our Report Watch series summarises Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Thomas Winsor's overview of the state of policing in England and Wales in 2019/20 including the policing response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

OPINION: The Emergency Services Network (ESN), the replacement for the UK police radio communications system, has been beset by delays and rising costs. Evan Morris MBE, vice chair of the National Association of Police, Fire and Crime Panels (NAPFCP) and chair of Cheshire Police and Crime Panel, calls on crime panels to challenge their Police and Crime Commissioners over the impact this has had on budgets.

Innovation: Many training and education organisations are moving more of their learning online, partly in response to the COVID-19 crisis – and often with mixed results. With more than 50 years' experience of distance learning, The Open University know the structure and support needed to successfully deliver online learning, as Dr Paul Walley, Director of Learning within the University's Centre for Policing Research and Learning, explains.

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 first of two articles, Professor Tom Kirchmaier, Director of Policing and Crime at the London School of Economics, outlines his team's work with British policing and some of the important principles of using big data.

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: Somaya Alwejdani and Professor Richard Wortley from the Jill Dando Institute UCL explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of harm posed to children through online sexual abuse.

ANALYSIS: New Zealand's efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic have been widely praised and admired. Mark Evans, a Deputy Chief Executive of New Zealand Police and a recent addition to Policing Insight's International Advisory Board, explores the role that the police service played in helping to enable that successful all-of-government response.

Opinion: With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) on the increase, Policing Insight contributor Andrew Staniforth discusses the progress of the ROXANNE project in discovering criminal networks and identifying their members by capitalising on certain aspect of AI technologies.

UCL COVID-19 SERIES: Nadine L. Salman and Dr Paul Gill from the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science discuss the terrorist threat during the coronavirus pandemic and how the lockdown has increased the risk of radicalisation online.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, Part 2: Launched in 2013, the QLiTE system is the cornerstone of Queensland Police's mobile technology services programme. Queensland Police Service Commissioner Katarina Carroll talks to Policing Insight about the benefits the system has already delivered and the possibilities for the future.

Analysis: At 9.9 million square kilometres, the UK can fit into Canada 40 times. Perivale and Taylor Consulting Vice President Robert Taylor and Senior Associate and Police ICT Specialist Kevin McQuiggin examine how policing has evolved in this vast country.