Perspectives on policing

In this series of papers, authors offer their own perspectives on emerging debates, policy and practice in contemporary policing. The Police Foundation’s Perspectives on policing papers have been written for senior police officers, academics and those interested in deeper analysis of some of the big questions facing policing today.

‘Disruption’ is a smarter approach to controlling serious and organised crime which can be resilient to conventional methods of crime control. As the number of serious and organised crime offenders in the UK continues to grow and the internet is lowering the barriers to perpetrating...
As we emerge from a global pandemic into a very different world, the Police Foundation’s Research Director Andy Higgins says it is time to think afresh about what it means to feel safe in our local ‘places’, both metaphorically and literally. This discussion paper is...
This paper looks at the implications of using police intelligence data for making decisions in prisons. It explores concerns about the accuracy of the data and the risks of bias. It also focuses on the need for transparency around how decisions are made to ensure...
The planned 20,000 uplift in police officer numbers announced in 2019 offers policing in England and Wales a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically improve the diversity of its police officer workforce. With this in mind, this paper uses published Home Office police workforce data to examine...
This is a revised version of a paper by Auke van Dijk, Strategic Advisor, Dutch Police Service, Frank Hoogewoning, General Secretary, Police Education Council, The Hague and Maurice Punch, Senior Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics which was originally published in the Belgian-Dutch quarterly Cahiers...
This paper examines whether police data on incidents of ‘sexting’ (‘youth produced sexual imagery’) can provide a reliable picture about the extent and nature of this phenomenon, including how the police service is responding. It also makes some suggestions about how the law might be...
This paper by Dr Sarah Charman presents findings from research conducted by the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth on new recruits’ evolving attitudes to the role of police officers in the early years of their careers and the key influences...
The development of a Crime Severity Score for England and Wales by the Office for National Statistics represents an important step towards a more sophisticated, two dimensional understanding of police recorded crime data. In the first paper in the Perspectives on policing series Andy Higgins examines...