Topical issues

INTERVIEW: Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Festus Akinbusoye spoke to Policing Insight’s James Sweetland about the abuse he’s suffered during his first term – including a shocking threat to his life that made him question whether to continue as a PCC at all – and his desire to help the force reach its full potential.

FEATURE: In January the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association (GLEPHA) published a series of reports as part of the ‘Envisaging the future of policing and public health’ project, covering a range of topics including harm reduction, diversion, and violence against women and girls; in the last in a series of seven articles, Policing Insight’s Thomas James looks at GLEPHA’s report on the police response to those in mental health crisis.

FEATURE: University of Aberdeen Postgraduate Researcher Janine Ewen – a GLEPHA Associate and leading harm reductionist – has wide-ranging academic understanding of policing and vulnerability, as well as extensive lived experience; in this article she shares some of her knowledge and ‘top tips’ for those looking to work more closely in the policing of vulnerable communities.

FEATURE: In the wake of recent reports and inquiries, and his own experience as the former Regional Director for London at the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Sal Naseem recently called for “structural reform” of the Met, more investment in police leadership, and a new approach to the current “fragmented system of police accountability”, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: With increased evidence of police officers around the world experiencing growing mental health trauma and PTSD, Neil Woods, a former undercover drugs officer and chairman of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) UK, believes policing urgently needs to explore the psychiatry revolution involving psychedelic medicine to protect officers’ mental health.

OPINION: A recent UK cross-party parliamentary report highlighted the cost to date of policing the protests around the war in Gaza, suggesting that this burden could prevent police from carrying out other duties effectively; but Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, warns that failing to adequately fund public order policing to safeguard people’s rights to demonstrate could significantly reduce opportunities for legitimate public protest.

OPINION: The Renters (Reform) Bill should introduce a better deal for tenants, but also looks set to make victims of domestic violence more vulnerable to short-notice evictions without assessment or support; Generation Rent Chief Executive Ben Twomey, a former PCC candidate and policing and criminal justice specialist, believes the Government needs to rethink parts of the Bill in order to protect victims and support policing’s efforts to tackle and reduce domestic abuse.

FEATURE: New research by the University of Nottingham Rights Lab and ECPAT UK has found that dwindling police and local authority resources, increased workloads, lack of training, institutional biases, and changing political priorities have led to a significant rise in child exploitation through modern slavery, prompting calls for a comprehensive national strategy, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: The latest statistics for England and Wales indicate that levels of recorded crime have fallen to an all-time low, yet there has been little mention of the significant drop by the media, the Government or forces themselves; in this second of two articles, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett considers the implications for how police performance is judged.

FEATURE: In the first in a series of white papers and articles exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in policing, AI expert Chief Philip Lukens looks at how body-worn cameras using elements of AI – such as natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning – can be used to extract, classify, and summarize key information from police encounters with the public, with a view to improving public confidence and trust.

INTERVIEW: In the second part of Policing Insight’s interview with Avon and Somerset Chief Constable Sarah Crew, she spoke to James Sweetland about the controversial incidents around issues of race explored in the TV series To Catch a Copper, and her own views expressed last year that the force is institutionally racist.

FEATURE: In January the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association (GLEPHA) published a series of reports as part of the ‘Envisaging the future of policing and public health’ project, covering a range of topics including harm reduction, diversion, and policing mental health; in the sixth in a series of seven articles, Policing Insight’s Thomas James looks at GLEPHA’s report on policing key populations.

ANALYSIS: Last week’s publication of the first part of the Angiolini Inquiry report highlighted significant concerns around misogyny, misconduct, and toxic cultures in policing in England and Wales; the findings echo previous research of female officers’ lived experiences by Senior Criminology Lecturer Dr Emma Cunningham, who believes policing needs support from outside experts to tackle misogyny and misconduct, and that change should begin with acceptance of the terms institutionalised racism and misogyny.

ANALYSIS: As organisations, individuals and communities around the world look to mark International Women’s Day, Dr Sarah Jane Fox of the University of Leicester Law School looks at the progress and challenges around women’s representation and roles in policing globally, and considers what more policing could and should be doing to achieve gender equality and equity.

FEATURE: Police recruitment has become increasingly challenging, particularly in reaction to addressing community under-representation; Policing Insight’s Vernon White, a former Chief of Ottawa Police and RCMP officer, looks back at a recruitment programme in northern Canada’s Nunavut territory, where English Second Language classes and corrective laser eye surgery were among the initiatives employed to increase recruitment from the Inuit community.

FEATURE: This month will see 34 forces across England and Wales joint community and business partners to take part in a series of Safer Business Action days to tackle the significant increase in retail theft and violence against shop workers – an initiative which is also set to be expanded to include the night-time economy, as National Business Crime Centre Lead Supt Patrick Holdaway explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: The latest annual assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), set out in a speech by Director-General Mike Burgess, has downgraded the terror threat level from ‘probable’ to ‘possible’; but Professor Greg Austin of the University of Technology Sydney believes the assessment is confusing, downplaying the threat of right-wing extremism while over-emphasising the threat from some foreign powers.

FEATURE: This month marks the 20th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack on Madrid that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500 others; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks back at Al Qaeda’s bombing of the Spanish capital and how it changed counter-terrorism approaches across Europe, ahead of European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism on 11 March.

INTERVIEW: Channel 4’s To Catch a Copper series revealed shocking incidents of misconduct in Avon and Somerset Police; in a two-part interview with Policing Insight’s James Sweetland, Chief Constable Sarah Crew talks about why she let the cameras in, footage of misconduct by officers that left her feeling “horrified” and “exhausted”, and her views about institutional racism.

ANALYSIS: The latest statistics for England and Wales indicate that levels of recorded crime have fallen to an all-time low, yet there has been little mention of the significant drop by the media, the Government or forces themselves; in this first of two articles, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett looks at the latest crime data and longer-term trends in crime, and why the apparent success in crime reduction remains something of a secret.

OPINION: With the recent report from the Angiolini Inquiry the latest high-profile criticism of UK policing culture, former officer turned police trainer Graham Goulden believes it is time to drop conformity, e-learning and a ‘whack a mole’ approach to misconduct in favour of an active bystandership that will help to instil critical loyalty among colleagues.

FEATURE: The potential of technological advances to transform policing has generated enormous excitement across the sector; but while many in law enforcement are aware of the opportunities offered, much less attention has been paid to the fundamentals needed to actually deliver this kind of tech-driven policing, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explains.

FEATURE: New research by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and social justice group Equally Ours has found that existing ‘myth-busting’ messaging used to refute rape misconceptions actually reinforces those beliefs; instead researchers have called for a ‘suspect-centric’ and values-based approach across the CPS as well as wider criminal justice organisations including the police, the Law Commission and the Home Office, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: A recently published article on Policing Insight regarding modern slavery highlighted concerns about the impact of UK Government reforms on victims of trafficking, but the outcome in Scotland differs significantly to England and Wales, says SNP policing spokesperson Allan Dorans MP, who believes researchers and others need to pay closer attention to the emerging divergence in policing north and south of the border.