Innovation

FEATURE: A crime prevention approach implemented by Essex Police used spatial analytics to focus on ‘places not people’ and incorporated hotspot policing to reduce offending by 40%; with the initiative now viewed as ‘business as usual’ within the force, the Home Office has directed other forces to ensure surge funding to tackle violence is focused on a similar hotspot approach, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INNOVATION: Police Futures, a new publication from the UK’s Police Chief Scientific Adviser, moves beyond science fiction to consider how technology will shape policing over the coming decades; in the last of a three-part series exploring the report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland looks at the findings around more advanced technologies – specifically, how neural interfaces might change how policing works in the future.

OPINION: Metropolitan Police Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer Darren Scates recently completed his two-year tenure as Chair of the UK’s National Police Technology Council; in this article he looks back at the significant and rapid changes during that period, and looks ahead at the opportunities for innovation facing policing, both in the short and longer term.

ANALYSIS: Various sectors of criminal justice systems around the world are increasing their use of artificial intelligence (AI), but AI has played a key part in offender assessment decisions in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and other countries for more than 20 years, with little or no transparency or independent inspection of the algorithms involved, as University of Surrey Professor Melissa Hamilton and Professor Pamela Ugwudike of the University of Southampton explain.

INNOVATION: Police Futures, a new publication from the UK’s Police Chief Scientific Adviser, moves beyond science fiction to consider how technology will shape policing over the coming decades; in the second in a three-part series exploring the report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland digs deeper into ‘sensing technology’, highlighted as one of the key developments for law enforcement of the future.

INNOVATION: In a new three-part series exploring how technology will shape policing over the coming decades, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports on Police Futures, a new publication from the UK’s Police Chief Scientific Adviser, which tries to move beyond science fiction and look towards what policing might really become.

FEATURE: Police officers and staff who have been assaulted or abused can struggle to talk about the impact of their experiences; now a new online training package – the first time wellbeing training has been made available digitally on a national scale – is providing support material that can be viewed in confidence, reinforcing the wider work of Operation Hampshire and Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service for England and Wales, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INNOVATION: Effective communications systems are crucial in ensuring timely and reliable service delivery for the police and others in the public sector; Richard Evans, Chief Technology Officer at Cinos, believes modern unified communications solutions such as cloud-based voice platforms can offer secure and efficient communications across multiple devices, as well as enhancing agency collaboration and co-ordination, improving contact with the public, and strengthening resilience.

ANALYSIS: The requirement for a degree qualification as part of the professionalisation of UK policing is opposed by the Home Secretary and several chief constables, who argue that academic work is too far removed from operational policing; a study by the University of Portsmouth with student officers has found that problem-based learning has the potential to make academic policing more relevant to student police officers by linking theory with practice, as Lecturer in Policing David Knowles explains.

FEATURE: With the UK’s continuing participation in the Horizon Europe EU research programme still unresolved, the signing of a new agreement between the European Commission and New Zealand last week means that NZ police innovators and researchers will now have access to an innovation programme with a budget of more than €95 billion until 2027, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

INNOVATION: While technology advances have driven efficiencies in many areas of policing, frontline officers often still find themselves manually inputting licence plates, driving licence numbers, and a range of other identification checks; Oliver Ledgard of Zebra Technologies believes the public safety sector is missing an opportunity to further increase efficiency and connectivity through the use of modern optical character recognition (OCR) technology.

FEATURE: As the expansion of the metaverse and the rapid development of AI create the potential for significant increases in the grooming and online sexual abuse of children, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is leading efforts to force tech giants and social media platforms to take much more effective measures to prevent the online sexual exploitation of youngsters, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: The public contact report that arose from Cityforum’s round table on the subject earlier this year highlighted the importance of collaboration between policing and private industry on introducing of new technology into the sector; Martin Taylor of cloud communications specialists Content Guru believes such partnerships are crucial if policing is to maximise the benefits of tech advances in an area that’s a top priority for the public.

ANALYSIS: Research from University of Warwick’s Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR) assesses the benefits and challenges of arts and culture as a means of better police engagement and relationship-building with seldom-heard communities who historically, have had little reason to trust the police, as Dr Rachel Lewis and Professor Jacqueline Hodgson explain.

OPINION: This year’s NPCC National Intelligence Conference focused on the themes of prevention and early intervention; Matt Horne, Head of Policing & Government for Clue Software and former Deputy Director of Investigations at the National Crime Agency, who was among those attending the event, explores the key issues that arose from the Conference, and shares his own experiences and insight into the current intelligence challenges and opportunities.

FEATURE: With facial recognition increasingly prominent in the news agenda in recent months, a novel application of this technology has recently been announced by Nottinghamshire Police; the force’s new remote breathalyser – which integrates facial recognition technology – is the first recorded use of this tool anywhere outside of the US, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

INNOVATION: Putting a smartphone into the hands of every police employee is no simple task, especially when old systems need to be adapted to new devices; but an ongoing programme from South Australia Police seeks to do exactly that – providing 6,000 phones at a cost of $35 million, with the potential to save 30 minutes for every officer per shift, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

FEATURE: With police forces in England and Wales facing challenges around building female representation in the service – particularly from seldom-heard communities – Sgt Mussa Meman and PC Nikki Nabi of Lancashire Police identified that the way the police fitness test was administered was leading to a disproportionate number of failures among female applicants, and created a new community focused approach that has significantly improved pass rates and helped to increase female representation within the force.

FEATURE: Automated analytics are increasingly viewed as an essential tool for keeping the public safe from serious harm, but they also create serious risks; a new report from The Alan Turing Institute presents a framework to help policing – and the security services – deploy analytics in a way that protects both privacy and public safety, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: With society recognising that artificial intelligence is likely to revolutionise the way we live our lives, there is also a growing consensus over the need for regulation; but Dr Asress Gikay, Senior Lecturer in AI at Brunel University, believes the UK’s pro-innovation attitude to regulation will be much more beneficial for business, the public and law enforcement than Europe’s approach based on potential problems.

ANALYSIS: The pace of artificial intelligence (AI) development has prompted calls from some quarters for a pause in the sector’s expansion efforts; members of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) technology sub-committee on AI – An Garda Síochána Deputy Commissioner Shawna Coxon, Tony Porter (Chief Privacy Officer, Corsight Ai), Netherlands Police AI expert Oscar Wijsman, US lawyer Don Zoufal, and IACP Communications and Technology Committee Chair Craig Allen – believe such calls reaffirm the need for law enforcement to take stock of the challenges presented and opportunities offered by the growth in AI.

FEATURE: New powers introduced by the European Union to tackle terrorist content online includes far-reaching obligations for host service providers both inside and outside the EU; but as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports, much more needs to be done to raise awareness of the regulations among tech providers, government, law enforcement and others in order for them to be effective.

FEATURE: Grand Junction is a gateway city to the mountains and canyons of Colorado and Utah, but its rural isolation also contributes to a suicide rate more than double the national average; Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend spoke to Grand Junction PD Detective Kristine Gregory about the launch of the department's Co-Responder Unit, which teams up officers with clinicians to improve the response to those in mental health crisis, and deliver better long-term outcomes.

FEATURE: Evidence-based policing is increasingly used to prevent crime and pursue offenders, but an innovative Cumbria Police approach is assessing student officers’ workloads and wellbeing through a crime harm index – with results including a reduction in resignations and a greater support for those early in their careers, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports