Topical issues

OPINION: Former Police Scotland superintendent Martin Gallagher, now an author, journalist and terrorism expert, fears that causes on the left or politics maybe conflating – with supporters potentially moving from political agitation to political violence, in echoes of the 1970s – at a time when policing finds itself potentially blind to the threat, and adopting a position that many of the public view as radical.

ANALYSIS: Researchers at Europol have identified the challenges created by the enhanced privacy levels offered through home routing – a service established as part of the introduction and expansion of 5G – which could leave law enforcement agencies unable to undertake lawful interception of calls, messages and other data, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

OPINION: A new report from the five nations of the Five Eyes intelligence community highlights the increasing rates of online youth radicalisation, a threat borne out by the involvement of young people in every counter-terrorism case investigated this year by the Australian Federal Police; Greg Barton, Professor of Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute, argues that while Australia already has good systems in place, the report offers valuable advice for parents, teachers, and any other agencies working with children and young people.

FEATURE: A report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change warns that UK’s current policing model is “fundamentally ill-suited” to tackling the huge threat of serious and organised crime, and urges the Government to establish a single UK-wide police force to lead on all crimes and threats that cross force boundaries, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: In the last in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR), extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explores the remarkable global variations in the legal and regulatory frameworks governing FR use, and whether a more effective approach can balance the obvious risks against the potential benefits to secure the best possible outcomes for public safety.

FEATURE: A 27-year-old paedophile was creating cartoonish pseudo child abuse images and distributing them among an online network; Detective Chief Inspector Jen Tattersall from Greater Manchester Police’s online child abuse investigations team tells Ian Weinfass how the force managed to bring a case against the offender, and safeguard real children at risk.

OPINION: Last month saw the jailing of Finlay Macdonald, who murdered his brother-in-law and attempted to kill three other people during a violent stabbing and shooting spree on the Isle of Skye and on the Scottish mainland; Michael Greville, a workplace violence reduction consultant who had a 30-year policing career, believes the case highlights the need for a review of Police Scotland’s armed response capabilities to ensure the safety of the public and officers, particularly in remote communities.

FEATURE: The latest Race Discrimination Report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct has highlighted continuing racial disparities in the use of police powers such as stop and search, and called on forces to address disproportionality in an effort to end the cycle of mistrust in minority ethnic communities, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: A new report from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland has urged Police Scotland to allocate more posts to roads policing, improve training, and increase enforcement in an effort to cut down on the number of fatal and serious injury road accidents as well as deter poor and dangerous driving by the public, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INTERVIEW: Having joined Peel Regional Police five years ago, Chief Nishan Duraiappah soon recognised the challenges facing the force, and set about implementing a change programme to create “the most progressive, innovative and inclusive service in the galaxy” – one which needed needs “to look and feel like it has a start-up mentality”, as he explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

OPINION: The recent review of the Australian Central Intelligence Commission has led to a change of role for the agency, with a focus on intelligence aimed at combating serious and organised crime, rather than traditional law enforcement and investigation; but Dr John Coyne and Liam Auliciems of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) warn that for the reorientation to succeed, challenges around operational responsibilities, resources, and ensuring intelligence is actionable will need to be addressed.

FEATURE: A new report argues that ignoring the role of women in organised crime – whether as criminal actors, as vulnerable victims, or as policy makers and leaders in law enforcement – is creating a ‘blind spot’ in the response to such criminal activity, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: Twelve years ago this month the planned suicide bombing of a US airport by an employee fuelled by online extremist content was successfully thwarted by the FBI, in what became a benchmark for covert insider threat operations; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks back at the Terry Lee Loewen case, and also at ongoing work to develop a strategy to help businesses detect and deter potential internal hostile actors.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: With over a decade of military and cyber intelligence experience, including training alongside NATO, Iulian Timischi introduces the urgent need for a new model of intelligence analysis that can keep pace with our modern data-driven age.

FEATURE: A new report from the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre highlights that police are failing to meet the public’s minimum standards of service across a number of key areas; Prof Adam Crawford, Co-director of the Centre, outlined some of the main implications of the research as well as what forces could do to address the challenge at the recent APCC-NPCC Partnership Summit, as Policing Insight’s Keith Potter reports.

ANALYSIS: Research by criminal intelligence specialist Helen Glazebrook as part of a Churchill Fellowship award examines the collaboration between police and correctional facilities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the UK, highlighting the need for closer co-operation between agencies particularly in relation to monitoring the actions of those involved in serious organised crime, as she explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

FEATURE: Four months on from violence and disorder across towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland, what caused them – and whether law enforcement is equipped to stop them taking place again in the future – is still a matter for debate; Ian Weinfass reports on discussions about these issues from the recent APCC-NPCC Partnership Summit.

ANALYSIS: New research exploring the challenge of distracted driving and police officers’ role in educating drivers about the dangers of mobile phone use highlights a lack of understanding about the impact of handsfree phone use, and missed opportunities to educate drivers; research authors Professor Gemma Briggs of the Open University, Dr Leanne Savigar-Shaw of the University of Staffordshire, and Keele University’s Dr Helen Wells explain the key findings from the research, and what can be done to address them.

ANALYSIS: An evaluation of a successful street outreach programme – pioneered by Leicestershire Police, but using community outreach staff rather than uniformed officers – has highlighted a significant drop in both the frequency and severity of offences in several city centre crime hotspot areas, as well as considerable financial savings, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: With police officers encountering digital evidence in the vast majority of inquiries, a digital evidence strategy (DES) can ensure they are prepared to effectively deal with it; Dr Graeme Horsman, Senior Lecturer in Digital Forensics at Cranfield University, explains how the GAMEPLANS acrostic can help officers produce a robust DES to effectively identify, collect, examine, and evaluate any digital devices/data, and define the circumstances when it is appropriate to conduct such tasks.

FEATURE: A new report by the Garda Síochána Inspectorate has called for the force to carry out a strategic threat and risk assessment to identify and tackle transnational organised crime; a workforce plan to better allocate resources, prioritising data-informed processes, and adopting an “all-island” approach to organised crime were also among more than 60 recommendations, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: The under-reporting of disability hate crime (DHC) is widely acknowledged, and a DHC training package for police and the wider criminal justice sector has been developed by support organisation Dimensions, working with Nottingham Trent University (NTU); an evaluation of the training by NTU’s Associate Professor Dr Irene Zempi, Professor Loretta Trickett, and Professional Policing Course Leader Martin Tangen, highlights the positive impact of the package, as well as the importance of training being informed by lived experiences.

FEATURE: Police leaders, academics and stakeholders gathered in Ontario recently for Canada’s first in-person evidence-based policing (EBP) conference, exploring a range of topics including overcoming barriers and normalizing EBP within law enforcement, the importance of leadership in embedding the approach, and turning research into action; Policing Insight’s Matthew Wood looks at the main themes and debates emerging from the Building Bridges event.

FEATURE: A report by the Centre for Women’s Justice following up on its super-complaint about police-perpetrated domestic violence in UK forces has highlighted “entrenched cultures” across the service that “harbour misogyny and cover up wrongdoing”, and has called for improved data collection, more effective vetting, better misconduct procedures, and better decision-making around safeguarding measures when officers face repeat allegations, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.