Technology/equipment/services

FEATURE: A recent report into how organisations can maximise value from their technology investments highlights the paradox that many pour investment into new and shiny technology without addressing the impact of the legacy systems that are the biggest barrier to effective digital transformation; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth says the report has clear messages for policing, particularly in the UK where major reform is on the horizon.

OPINION: In the final part of the series of articles exploring UK policing’s software landscape, organisational psychologist Michael Stephenson looks at the challenges and opportunities offered by policing’s largest technology supplier – Microsoft – and questions whether policing’s relationship with the US tech giant needs to be significantly restructured as part of modernisation and reform process.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Police reform in the UK is placing safeguarding outcomes under increasing scrutiny, with a strong focus on prevention, consistency, and accountability particularly in tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG). As demand grows, forces must modernise how risk is assessed and acted upon. Ben Jarvis explores how data and AI can strengthen safeguarding processes such as Clare’s Law to deliver faster, more consistent decisions aligned with reform priorities.

FEATURE: The latest National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised crime, published by the UK’s National Crime Agency, highlights the potential for conflicts and wider “geopolitical instability” to provide “fertile ground” for exploitation by organised crime groups (OCGs), while the growth in online crime and the impact of overseas OCGs on UK communities and security represent significant threats, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: As global policing enters a new data-driven era, questions continue over how the new technology is perceived by the public; a new study by Dr Javad Pool, Professor Marta Indulska, Associate Professor Ida Asadi, and Professor Shazia Sadiq of The University of Queensland, and Queensland Police Service Data Services Manager Nick Moss, suggests that while most of the community accept the use of data-driven and AI-assisted tools in policing, far fewer trust the technology.

FEATURE: The latest Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment from INTERPOL highlights the “industrialisation” of transnational financial fraud and the likelihood that offending will offending “escalate significantly” over the next five years as artificial intelligence leads to easier entry for criminal networks, prompting the agency to set out a range of initiatives to tackle the threat, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: In the second in his series on UK policing’s software and IT archipelago, organisational psychologist Michael Stephenson explores what modernising actually looks like when the islands of the archipelago cannot simply be rebuilt from scratch, including the constraints to modernisation, how they can be navigated, the police reform process as leverage, and what an effective and realistic modernisation sequence should look like.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: AI-powered voice analytics are transforming lawful intelligence operations by replacing rules-based, batch processing with real-time, adaptive AI models. Using advanced speech-to-text and natural language processing, SS8’s Intellego XT platform makes voice data searchable, multilingual, and context-aware, enabling investigators to rapidly triage conversations, detect meaningful threats, and uncover insights at scale.

INNOVATION: While most police agencies accurately monitor and measure performance data such as calls answered, response times and arrests made, metrics on how a community feels about that performance is often absent; Michael Simon, Chief Strategy Officer at civic technology specialists Zencity, explains how Edmonton Police Service embedded community perception into strategic planning and performance management.

INNOVATION: A “revolutionary” suite of tech tools developed as part of the Tackling Organised Exploitation (TOEX) programme’s Capabilities Environment is now being made available to all police forces in England and Wales, to assist with complex investigations into child sexual exploitation and abuse as well as other serious crime, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: In the first of three articles exploring UK policing’s ‘software archipelago’ – the interlocking landscape of platforms, systems, tools and infrastructure – organisational psychologist Michael Stephenson looks at the growing focus on organisations developing their own software using AI prompts, and why issues such as the regulatory complexity of policing systems means that in most (but not) all cases, buying rather than building is still the best option.

FEATURE: Despite campaign groups continuing to voice concerns about potential bias in the use of facial recognition technology (FRT), UK policing is pushing ahead with adopting the technology, with backing from the Government; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at one of the most recent examples of FRT failure, and highlights a new European initiative to enhance objectivity, neutrality, and fairness in the pursuit of justice, particularly in relation to digital technologies.  

INNOVATION: While efforts to prevent and detect crime and ensure security are increasingly focused on the digital landscape alongside closer community relations, the mail system still offers opportunities for criminals and bad actors, as the international drug trafficking operation using the Canadian postal service recently uncovered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police demonstrated; safety and security professional Vernon White looks at the challenges of the identifying invisible threats, and the steps being taken to make it possible.

FEATURE: This month sees the launch of a £30m Online Crime Centre combining police, intelligence services, banking, mobile networks and major tech firms in the fight against fraud – a key element in the UK Government’s recently launched Fraud Strategy 2026-2029, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: To understand how criminal networks operate, intelligence needs to connect across cases, sources and time. Fragmented data, isolated tools and repeated manual effort make that difficult in practice. This article explores five structural blockers and how addressing them helps build a clearer, more complete and continuously evolving intelligence picture.

FEATURE: A second report into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by police in Canada, published by the University of British Columbia’s AI & Criminal Justice Initiative, highlights a lack of cohesion over governance arrangements for adoption and deployment of the new technology, and urges police to take a ‘steady, cautious approach’ that incorporates comprehensive standards, legal safeguards, robust independent oversight, and democratic accountability, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Retail crime in the UK is rising fast, but efforts to tackle it are being held back by a lack of trust. Many retailers no longer believe reporting incidents leads to action, weakening the system. Rebuilding trust through better communication between retailers and policing is essential to improve reporting, strengthen intelligence and deliver better outcomes.

INNOVATION: A new frontline file management system rolled out by New Zealand Police is proving to be a “game changer” for the workforce, says Superintendent Blair Macdonald, cutting the backlog for case processing from two weeks to just four hours, and helping to increase public trust and confidence in the service, as he explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

FEATURE: A recent survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology suggests that, as with more traditional forms of crime, members of the public overestimate the likelihood that they will be a victim of AI‑enabled crime; but while frequent users of AI-enabled technology must be encouraged to employ more protective behaviours, those reluctant to use it should be supported to do so safely and confidently, reports Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

INTERVIEW: Ahead of next month’s launch of the Police.AI initiative, which will develop and drive technological advances for forces in England and Wales, NCA Director of Threat Leadership Alex Murray, the National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for AI, spoke to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons about the aims and ambitions for the new centre, the potential for leveraging technology in policing, and the role of police leadership – with current chiefs likely to be the last cohort to run a ‘human only’ workforce.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Criminal scam operations are rapidly evolving, and SIM farms now power fraud at an industrial scale. These covert centers can house tens of thousands of SIM cards, cycling through them to evade detection while enabling mass scam calls and texts. SS8’s latest analysis reveals how advanced location intelligence helps law enforcement uncover these hidden operations and shut them down.

FEATURE: The latest report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee into forensic science provision in England and Wales is warning that the neglect of the system is a “national scandal in the making”, with urgent steps needing to be taken including the creation of a National Institute for Forensic Science, an independent national storage capacity for long-term evidence retention, and a credible plan to preserve specialist forensic skills, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: The latest report from digital investigations specialists Cellebrite highlights that while smartphones are now involved in 97% of criminal cases, many policing agencies still face a digital evidence backlog due to factors such as a lack of digital forensics resources, and a reliance on portable hard drives to share digital data; but there are steps that law enforcement can take to ease the bottleneck and speed up justice, as Jared Barnhart, Cellebrite’s Head of Global Engagement & Community, explains.

OPINION: While traditional policing challenges around issues such as serious violence and community harm will remain, the greatest pressures on law enforcement over the coming decade will come from hybrid and cascading risk, warns Odette Meli, former Co-ordinator of the Australian Federal Police’s Strategic Insights Centre and a Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), who argues that policing will need to integrate strategic foresight and interoperability if it is to maintain legitimacy.