Ruth Halkon, Police Foundation
In a 2018 lecture, Professor Larry Sherman gave “two cheers” for evidence-based policing. While individual officers were talking about evidence-based policing and testing its ideas, a ‘tipping point’, where it had become mainstreamed into police organisational culture and governance, was some way off. With the 2024 Society of Evidence Based Policing annual conference, that tipping point is within reach.
Over two days, more than 200 delegates from 91 different organisations and nine different countries gathered in the Law Faculty in the Sidgwick site in Cambridge, incidentally the venue for Sherman’s lecture, to share the latest developments in policing practice. The two-day conference, held in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, showed policing research is no longer something being done to police officers with little bearing on their day-to-day practice. It is being done by police officers, working with academics and other partners, to solve real world problems and is making a real difference to the life outcomes of those they serve.
Innovative technologies
Rapidly evolving crime types, enabled by the democratisation of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, have opened up new possibilities for criminals, and also new opportunities for detection and deterrence that the police cannot afford to ignore. Yet, as SEBP Chair Alex Murray and Jacob Verrey of Cambridge University told the conference, while there are huge productivity gains to be made, police forces must ensure they are led by the evidence, not by the technology. Otherwise, they risk investing in technologies which are not suited to the intended task, or do not work, or which may actively lead to discrimination and disproportionality, or worse – such as in the case of Lobna Hemid who was killed by her husband after Spanish algorithm VioGén suggested she was safe. Her brother later said: “the computer has no heart.” It is the job of the individual human to be that heart.
An excellent example of innovative practice grounded in procedural justice is Dorset Police’s recently launched Enhanced Video Response (EVR), which drew on the success of Rapid Video Response in Kent Police. Chief Constable Amanda Pearson and Superintendent Stewart Gates described how the intervention, which was tested during a three-month randomised controlled trial, aimed to address the long delays in responding to non-emergency calls for service. Trained response officers, who were on adjusted duties, offered victims who met the criteria the option of an immediate response via video, as opposed to waiting hours if not days for an in person visit. The pilot showed marked improvements in efficiency and response times, as well as increases in the confidence of victims. A blueprint has now been produced and EVR is being rolled force-wide.
International perspectives
The evidence-based policing movement is growing globally, with thriving societies in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Holland, the US and now Sweden. Benny Maelberg of the Swedish Police Authority shared lessons on how to embed EBP into “the very DNA of the police organisation,” through a process of building a research base and them creating a framework to ensure staff and leadership embrace an evidence-based worldview. This is done through ensuring the most appropriate research designs are used, that findings are translated into a language comprehensible to frontline policing and that EBP is taught as part of basic training. A presentation from ANZ SEBP Global Collaborations Lead Simon Williams showed that while the policing systems and structures may be different, human behaviour remains the same. Thus lessons can be learned from police forces worldwide. He outlined three randomised controlled trials which examined different ways of enabling offenders to do the right thing. One, carried out by New Zealand Police, applied the nudge theory to create a targeted intervention to make it easier for individuals to follow a process. Simplifying the bail notice to make it clearer where defendants had to be and when led to a 15 per cent decrease in failure to appear at court. It also changed cultures and mindsets around adopting evidence-based practice, as feedback loops meant officers could see in real time the benefits of the new approach.
Spreading innovation
Nerys Thomas of the College of Policing showed how rapidly evidence-based policing has gained traction in the past decade. Through the Crime Reduction Toolkit and the Practice Bank, good ideas are being locally evaluated, and then replicated, and then shared so that other forces can copy them. One of these is Right Care Right Person, an approach first formulated in Humberside and now replicated across the country, which is about giving those in need timely access to support that is compassionate and meets their needs. Home Office researcher Dr Olivia Hambly said a process evaluation showed considerable savings in officer hours, but also that the intervention was most successful when it was carried out working with stakeholders in an open, transparent way.
One glaring absence from the Practice Bank however, is an intervention that hasn’t worked. Yet as Professor Jason Roach from the University of Huddersfield told the conference, a lot can be gained through learning from failure. It is commonly believed, he said, the best thief takers have an almost clairvoyant ability to spot a crook. Rather than being innate however, this ability is developed through a process of predicting likely outcomes, observing actual outcomes and revising conditional probabilities – in other words, being prepared to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes to better identify the few that have criminal intentions. The main challenge for policing now, with the loss of experienced officers, is how to expedite this learning process so it doesn’t take five years on the job to learn the job.
Violence prevention
An important example of how evidence-based practices can be used to train people in what is normally learned from experience is Thames Valley Police’s Project Vigilant. Detective Inspector Tina Wallace shared with the conference how she had applied knowledge learned in Counter Terrorism Policing and covert intelligence to teach officers to identify and disrupt potential offenders in the nighttime economy. Plain clothed spotters were trained to spot predatory offending behaviour such as loitering and aggressive persistence to stalking, and then uniformed officers engaged with each man identified to interrupt their behaviour. As well as disrupting offending, the project built up a picture of common traits and modus operandi of predatory offenders, and helped build safer public spaces.
Diversion and prevention
We are in a time when many of the headlines surrounding policing and the criminal justice system are grim. Charge rates are dire and need to improve, but if more people are jailed the prison system will collapse. But as the growing literature around diversion shows, there is another way. As presentations from Dr Stevie-Jade Hardy from the Youth Endowment Fund and Claire Ely from the Centre for Justice Innovation stated, a first offence does not necessarily mean someone will be a persistent offender and it is impossible to tell at that stage who will grow out of crime and who will not. Diversion not only improves the outcomes for young people, some of whom will be victims of crime as well as suspects, it can also save a considerable amount of money. The Metropolitan Police’s Chief Inspector Kate Bradley described how she piloted a new approach to victims of serious violence in London by setting up a dedicated police team based at the Royal London Hospital. Embedding a Trauma Support Team has led to higher charge rates, improved intelligence and safeguarding and prevented revictimisation. As Dr Peter Neyroud told the conference, such initiatives can offer “uplifting sources of hope” to the beleaguered criminal justice system. But diversion can only be done differently if it is properly funded – and as Sarah Carlsen-Browne of Devon and Cornwall Police pointed out, people at the centre are not yet brave enough to fund it.
Next steps
The conference closed with a challenge from SEBP Chair Alex Murray. Each individual delegate, especially if they are serving officers, has a responsibility to bring back what they have learned, either through replicating trials, or influencing their wider understanding of how policing operates as part of a system. Murray urged attendees to: “Grab one thing that took your fancy. It might be holding an event or using behavioural science or role out EVR, or if you have a problem, apply an evidence-based approach to solving it. Speak to your boss. Do it.”