Professor Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay

As always, there were varied and interesting topics discussed at the Police Science Council meeting at City St George's, University of London, hosted by our chair Professor Anthony Finkelstein.

These included topics led by Council members and presentations from senior police officers as well as the Police Chief Scientific Adviser’s own research team. This commenced with a recap of work by Professor Lorch on handling complex data in court and the robustness of data that is admissible for evidence. Professors Bandyopadhyay and Crawford then spoke about their work with trailblazer forces to understand Out of Court Resolutions (OOCRs). This was followed by a presentation on Digital Forensics by Ollie Whitehouse, Professor Sarah Morris and DrCarolyn Lovell, pointing out the need for further investment to enable the police and wider CJS to carry out its core functions in a rapidly changing landscape.

While these projects are diverse, they reflect a common aim of PSC members to work collaboratively with the police and wider criminal justice stakeholders to improve the evidence base so that scientific principles are at the heart of policing and the criminal justice sector.

A fascinating presentation by Catherine Akehurst T/DCC and the NPCC Programme Lead for the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, explored what the Guarantee, announced last Autumn, will mean in practice.

Post lunch, the report of the Police S&T profession was discussed (led by Dr Carolyn Lovell and Bryn Hughes) including conversations around encouraging people with different backgrounds e.g. STEM graduates to consider policing as a career option and how to promote regular engagement with S&T within policing and develop a framework to encourage pockets of good practice more widely.

There were updates from the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser. Some recent externally commissioned work on the link between crime and economic growth was looked at, this included a broad-brush study on the impact of policing on growth using case studies (undertaken by Crest Advisory) as well as a granular level econometric study (undertaken by academics form the Universities of Birmingham, Sheffield, City, University of London) that estimates the economic benefits of policing using hedonic house pricing models. This shows how connected some of the aims of the government’s mission are (safety is, after all, intimately linked to wealth and health), and the need for further cross mission synergies.

The meeting ended with news about the new Policing Academic Centres of Excellence (P-ACEs) funded by the NPCC and UKRI, and one hopes that the expected innovation and sharing of good practices arising from the P-ACEs working closely with the police will help spur police productivity and aid police reform.