The Police Science Council (PSC) is a publicly appointed, independent expert  committee which brings world-leading science and social science expertise  from academic and industry. Each quarter, the PSC meet to provide advice to policing and for each meeting, a member of the PSC will provide an insight into the discussions taking place. Below, Ollie Whitehouse describes his experiences of the January 2024 meeting.

A cold January in the South of England saw the Police Science Council (PSC) head off to the University of Southampton’s Science Park. 

Barriers to Adopting New Science and Technology in Policing 

We had a fascinating discussion on what it takes to get new science adopted understanding that such innovations gave us hair analysis, fingerprints and DNA among many other things. 

The striking realisation for me is that courts are the final arbiter. Now I appreciate this should have been obvious, but it was not until the end game was described that you realise that the validity of any science used in an investigation is open to challenge in court.  

To me this highlighted the importance of scientific literacy within the judicial system given the changing world and the value that scientific breakthroughs bring. 

Digital Health Apps and their Usage 

Our first academic presentation was on attitudes of the public to healthcare apps by Dr Pickering, including what drives their usage, how users’ usage may differ from that intended and the parts of society they do not penetrate. 

Outside of these insights were several revelations around attitudes to privacy and data accuracy. Findings for example indicate that people are deeply concerned with the accuracy of data as it relates to them when produced by others. Other insights included that people share data often driven by the desire to be connected to others, but they will provide inaccurate information to avoid stigmatisation. 

So, what is the relevance to policing you may ask? Well, policing is on a journey where similar technologies are being explored both for the wellbeing of officers and in support of the citizen; such learning from adjacent disciplines adds a tremendous amount of value. 

Testing Revolution 

A similarly fascinating presentation came from Dr AI Edwards who discussed the innovations around bioanalytical work going on at Southampton University. There are a number of factors driving the change in point of care testing which will bring with it value for policing.  

These factors include: 

• a drive for portable technology: agriculture, food testing, etc, is progressing this way 

• technology is getting smaller with the ability to incorporate micro-electronics into hand held devices while enabling high quality biological analysis 

• an assumption that all diagnostics will be made by a computer 

• a lot of assessments/patient observation data fed into the system 

• digital output into data driven decision making 

• the ability to target low amounts of target molecules. 

I took from this presentation that market demand and science and technology are converging at pace in the bioanalytical space driven by a multitude of factors. As such we can expect numerous innovations relevant to policing to come from this field. 

Policing Crime and Technology 

The final presentation was from Dr Craig Webber who presented on the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary led Police Custody Video-Book Project. This solution drew on a wide range of academic disciplines including criminology, psychology and computer science. 

This solution diverts young offenders i.e. those who will benefit from intervention. 

Digital Forensics Challenges in Law Enforcement 

It should come as no surprise that Digital Forensics demand in policing continues to grow. Demand and overall volume coupled with diversity, local force capacity and skills required. 

The ‘Future of Digital Forensics Programme’ has the opportunity to provide substantial benefits to policing with regards to scale and address many of the challenges. 

The first stage of this work was to gather data to quantify the breadth and scale of the issues or provide a stable enough foundation to build change on. This data collection was conducted, and it identified a number of core issues, including: undefined service needs with the need for improved governance; sporadic and uncoordinated spending; differing and inefficient spending and varied levels of experience and inadequate technology.  

Phase two of the programme will look at the operating model and governance for consistency, duplication, validation and accreditation. The need to balance innovation and the appropriate type and level of accreditation was a core topic of discussion. 

Outside of the topics mentioned, the Police Science Council and the Police Chief Scientific Adviser had wide ranging discussions on a variety of science and technology topics, as is always the way. This included seeing some of the projects undertaken by the students of Southampton University over lunch.