Topical issues

POLICE SUPERS' CONFERENCE: As superintending ranks from across England and Wales gathered this week for the Police Superintendents’ Association (PSA) Annual Conference, PSA President Paul Fotheringham defended operational officers’ engagement with community groups and their efforts to promote diversity, and warned that language used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman and others was positioning the service as “political rather than inclusive”, reports Policing Insight's Keith Potter.

INTERVIEW: As she takes the helm of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) –  the representative group for UK police governance – Donna Jones speaks to Policing Insight’s Ian Weinfass about the changes that are coming for PCCs and the wider law enforcement picture.

FEATURE: In the fifth in a new series of The Police Student focusing on Criminology in Policing, Policing Insight Academic Editor Dr Carina O’Reilly explores sociological theories for explaining crime, including the pioneering work of the Chicago School, which examined the effects of social disorganisation on crime – an approach which still has real relevance to the role of community policing today.

ANALYSIS: Police engagement in UK schools suffered a significant reduction in funding and resources during the austerity era; but University of Portsmouth Policing Lecturer David Knowles, a former police officer, believes that recent trials of his Your Choice Matters engagement exercise highlight the potential for reducing vulnerability to knife crime and hate crime among young people.

ANALYSIS: With gang membership on the rise in recent years in New Zealand, the country’s novel approach – prioritising deep engagement with gang communities through bodies such as the Gang Harm Insights Centre, alongside tough enforcement – is under more pressure than ever, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

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FEATURE: As police leaders and practitioners, government and industry prepare to gather for this week’s Police Digital Summit, Martyn Underhill, a former police officer and police and crime commissioner who is now a consultant on policing issues, reflects on a similar Cityforum summit from earlier in the summer which focused on the challenges, progress and future potential for the police delivery of digital forensics.

INTERVIEW: In the second part of our extended interview series with Metropolitan Police Chief Scientific Officer Professor Lawrence Sherman, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland spoke to him about VAWG 100, the force’s innovative new approach to tackling high-harm offences against women and girls.

ANALYSIS: A new report from the Police Foundation assesses the implications, opportunities and risks for the police service of adopting new contact and engagement technology as it seeks to rebuild public trust and confidence; the Foundation’s Research Director Andy Higgins explains more about the key points from the report.

OPINION: Improving system interoperability has been something of a technology holy grail for UK policing, and key to overcoming the frustrations felt by frontline officers as well as operational ineffectiveness and inefficiency; Wayne Parkes, former Chief Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Officer for the Police Digital Service and now a DDaT policing consultant, believes the wider adoption of Integration Platform-as-a-Service (IPaaS) could be the solution.

OPINION: Earlier this year British Columbia began Canada’s first drug ‘decriminalisation’ policy, removing criminal sanctions for adults in possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs; but research scientist Dr Kanna Hayashi, an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, warns that while police continue to seize drugs even when users aren’t charged with offences, toxic drug deaths will remain a major problem.

FEATURE: Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth takes a look at the UK's new National Risk Register, the most open and transparent Register to date, and considers the implications for policing and other emergency services of the increased focus on partnership approaches.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Salesforce has introduced a capability that transforms the experience for a victim of crime, providing them with automatic updates on their case and offering a feedback facility. This will initially target high-volume, low-level crimes.

INTERVIEW: Widely regarded as the founder of evidence-based policing, Professor Lawrence Sherman is one of the world’s most influential policing experts; in the first article in a four-part interview series, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland spoke with Professor Sherman about his innovative work as the Metropolitan Police’s first Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) tackling some of the biggest problems facing the force.

OPINION: In September 2022, Sir Mark Rowley came back into policing after some time away from the job at the end of a 30-year career, to take up one of the UK’s toughest roles as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; Policing Insight’s Graham Wettone, who served in the Met Police for 30 years, looks back over Sir Mark’s first year in post, and delivers an annual appraisal of how well the Commissioner has performed against his stated objectives.

FEATURE: Researchers from the University of Birmingham have identified key warning signs that indicate which survivors of domestic abuse may be most at risk of attempting suicide, and believe that sharing the assessment tool with police and healthcare professionals could help to keep more abuse survivors alive, as Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: While police officers accept and understand the physical dangers of the job, David Marshall, a serving officer and part-time policing lecturer and PhD researcher, believes that the constant negative rhetoric, public disdain and media criticism around policing – exacerbated by a lack of effective leadership – is leaving officers exposed to even greater levels of psychological danger and harm to mental health that are fuelling high attrition rates. 

INTERVIEW: In the latest in a series of interviews with leading figures involved in the research and investigation of organised crime, Policing Insight’s Dr Chris Allen spoke to Valentin Pereda, Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal, about the need to tackle the flow of illegal firearms, the importance of conversations between academia and law enforcement, and the impact of organised crime in his home country of Mexico.

ANALYSIS: The Government of British Columbia has introduced new policing standards in relation to the response to and investigation of sexual assault, in a bid to ensure a “victim-centred, trauma-informed approach”, as well as highlighting the need for police policies to be “culturally-appropriate and legally-informed”, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: New research by Dr Jackie Alexander and Professor Sarah Charman at the University of Portsmouth has highlighted gender disparity in the temporary promotions process in UK policing, which they believe is likely to have as great an impact on gender advancement as the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’; but with forces and the Government “at best ignorant of, and at worst disinterested in” these areas of gender bias, they argue that little will be done to address the disproportionality unless data is collated and examined in more detail to understand the scale of the disparity.

ANALYSIS: Earlier this month the Australian Government released new action plans to end violence against women and children, including the first dedicated to addressing violence against women and children in First Nations communities; Monash University Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon and Associate Professor Marie Segrave, and Griffith University Professor Silke Meyer, explore the aims of the plans, how their progress will be measured, and what is needed to ensure effective change and a reduction in violence.

FEATURE: Drones are increasingly a vital tool in policing, playing an important role in areas of search and surveillance; but with concerns highlighted around the manufacture of unmanned aircraft systems in China, and the increasing use of drones by criminal gangs, law enforcement must ensure that the risks around the procurement and deployment of drone and counter-drone technologies are acknowledged and understood, says Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth.

ANALYSIS: HM inspectors recently highlighted the concern that poor data gathering and analysis is affecting police performance management in England and Wales; Policing Insight’s Ian Weinfass looks at the issues involved and puts the spotlight on two of the forces that are getting things right.

OPINION: The police use of live facial recognition (LFR) regularly comes under scrutiny because of privacy, accuracy and surveillance concerns; but Dr Asress Gikay, Senior Lecturer in AI, Disruptive Innovation, and Law at Brunel University, argues that rather than banning LFR, more effective regulation of its use would address concerns while enhancing public safety.