Crime
Research Topic
Language: English
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Research problems linked to this topic
- What technical and behavioural methods that can be used to improve the quality of data within police systems, including to reduce the burden on users and correct inputs by staff to reduce human error?
- What novel millimetric wave sensing technologies can be used by policing to identify hidden objects??
- What counter technologies may be used to trick large scale audio-visual data processing and analysis systems used by the police and how can they be mitigated?
- How can policing maintain the integrity of the evidential chain when processing and analysing audio-visual data?
- How can policing overcome challenges around the collection, processing and storage of (usually large) files from audio-visual materials, including when working with still compared to moving images?
- What advances in analysing microbiomes and genetics can be utilised to identify or track criminals from traces found at crime scenes?
- What emerging biological or behavioural measurements and calculations can be used to ascertain or impersonate a person’s identity?
- What are the reasons for case attrition and what works to avoid it, for different case types? What are the impacts of case attrition on victims, particularly for serious violence and sexual abuse cases?
- How can AI be used to identify harmful content?
- How can the police service measure the quality of its analytical data?
- How can policing best assess and evidence the benefits of crime prevention initiatives?
- What is the value and impact of policing’s crime prevention initiatives within the context of diverse communities and populations? How do policing’s crime prevention initiatives need to be altered to have a better impact in diverse communities and populations?
- What are the downstream impacts of climate change on criminality and policing’s operating model?
- How can policing increase the scientific expertise of our workforce to drive scientific thinking across the service?
- How can policing enrich and promote a ‘science and evidence first’ culture by identifying effective pedagogy, learning technologies, and research on organisational design?
- Improving investigative outcomes and detection rates, particularly in relation to crime with a digital footprint
- Improving our understanding of criminal justice approaches which are most effective in reducing re-offending
- Understanding the links between drug markets, county lines and gang violence
- Reducing victimisation and repeat victimisation in relation to domestic abuse
- Effectively safeguarding those vulnerable to radicalisation
- Effectively managing violent offenders who pose a risk to the public
- What works to reduce reoffending for different groups? For example, those with mental health problems, or those repeatedly convicted of low-level offences?
- How can wider attributes, or a broader range of factors, be incorporated into our understanding and definition of reoffending? How could outcome measures, including intermediate outcomes, be utilised?
- How do an individual’s criminogenic needs change throughout time within the criminal justice system? What are the social factors that lead to reoffending? What characterises individuals that desist from further offending?
- How can we better meet the needs of those with legal issues to resolve in either the civil or family justice system and the criminal justice system concurrently, for example, domestic abuse victims, victims of fraud, or defendants facing eviction?
- What are the levels and drivers of serious organised crime and the illicit economy in prisons, including drugs, psychoactive substances, and mobile phones?
- How prevalent is repeat victimisation and who does it affect? What is the overlap between being a victim and committing an offence, and how does this vary by, for example, crime type and demographic characteristics?
- How do police activities – such as Release Under Investigation (RUI) – affect flows into the criminal courts?
- Which groups struggle most to resolve their justice problems, either through inaction or difficulty accessing the justice system and wider support services?
- Approaches that deter people from getting involved in cyber crime, moving deeper into cyber crime and/or reoffending.
- Intervention programmes for offenders who view online indecent images of children.
- Combating illicit markets.
- Understanding how criminal business models operate and succeed.
- Nature and prevalence of links between SOC and drug trafficking / modern slavery Understanding when and where criminal or terrorist behavior is likely to occur, how to deter it, and associated ethical questions.
- Wider role of forensics in crime prevention as well as detection, for example in safeguarding.
- Constructing secure evidential cases against offenders in a changing technological context.
- Relationship between extremism and integration, dynamics of friendship/familial and community relationships, and links between hate crime, other societal crimes and extremism.
- Understanding the contribution of forensic techniques to the Criminal Justice System, within investigations and in court, including issues such as attrition of cases in the system.
- Preventing criminal, hostile or mischievous use of autonomous and unmanned systems, or attacks of the systems themselves, especially through “security by design”.
- Improving understanding of how changes in crime and non-crime demand are affecting how the police respond to incidents.
- Detecting activity and exposing the identity of the perpetrator, or deterring illegal transactions, without disrupting legitimate commerce.
- Barriers to prosecution and seizure of illicit profits, and approaches to ensuring victims receive adequate financial compensation through civil and criminal routes.
- Building the what works evidence base for a changing crime landscape.
- Capability against money laundering and other illicit transactions, including relating to alternative currencies.
- The nature and extent of business crime.
- Changes in the opportunity structure for crime and in the drivers of the tendency to criminal behaviour, whether social, innate or environmental.
- What behavioural and technical interventions will improve the safety of public spaces and the public’s perception of their safety?
- What impact do abuse, threats and violence have on journalists in the UK? What is the most appropriate way to define ‘abuse’, particularly online abuse, of journalists? What are the perceived boundaries between abuse and valid criticism by different stakeholders? What are the potential triggers for journalist abuse in the UK and internationally, including through analysis of online abuse on social media platforms and publisher websites, and the online accounts posting this abuse and wider evidence gathering?
- How safe are journalists in the UK and how has this changed over time?
- Preventing offenders from inciting violence and promoting their actions through online channels
- Using digital channels to prevent and disrupt crime more effectively
- Supporting partners and communities to reduce crime and vulnerability
- Interventions to reduce different types of child sexual abuse.
- Tackling forced labour in supply chains.
- Approaches to parsing images automatically.
- How do licence period, conditions, and durations affect the potential for recalls, and what are the downstream impacts on individual outcomes and risks to public protection?
- How does the combination of time in prison and activities undertaken impact upon reoffending upon release?
- What are the enablers and barriers to effective Integrated Offender Management (IOM) strategies? How can stakeholders be supported in the delivery of IOM?
- Understanding differences in victim satisfaction across London
- Maximising opportunities from digital forensics in relation to crime prevention and detection
- Measuring the impact of disruption of organised criminal networks
- Understanding the drivers of homicide and serious violence
- Understanding effective police-led opportunities for crime prevention, with a particular focus on violent crime
- How can we better understand the dynamic risk factors for sexual reoffending and how they evolve over time? Particularly those identified via the Active Risk Management System (ARMS).
- How can agencies work together most effectively to protect the public from offending (and reoffending) of a highly serious or dangerous nature? Under what circumstances do multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) reduce public protection risks?
- What contributes to effective electronic tagging and monitoring, including GPS and radio frequency trackers, and sobriety tags, in protecting the public from harm? Are there specific groups of individuals for whom electronic tagging and monitoring is more effective?
- How effective is technology at combating the illicit economy and mitigating crime?
- How do illicit goods enter the estate and what role do established crime networks play? How effective are measures at preventing and disrupting the supply of drugs and other illicit goods entering the estate and impacts on organised crime more generally?
- How sustainable are different types of role within the legal profession and sector? Particularly criminal defence and specialist legal roles such as mental health lawyers?
- Novel methods of predicting/detecting explosive manufacture.
- Real world threat detection and mitigation capability, ensuring minimal impact on privacy rights. This includes the exploitation of more of the electromagnetic spectrum; compressive sensing; connectivity; use of video analytics; the internet of things; wider use of smart technologies including tracking and remote systems; advanced materials; informatics. ###Threats in the stream of commerce (including people, vehicles, freight, parcels; to detect threats to safety, security, economy, health):
- Approaches to lifetime offender management and deterrence of continuing criminal behaviour, such as Serious Crime Prevention Orders.
- Use of technology by organised criminals, and changes to the threat due to future technologies.
- Digital forensics especially in light of rapid technological change.
- Common insights across different “hidden crimes”.
- Prevalence, location and nature of different types of modern slavery in the UK.
- Motivations for committing modern slavery offences, and types of organisations, businesses and services that enable offending.
- The social and psychological harm of new forms of crime.
- How social media can facilitate, monitor and discourage crime and recruitment into organised crime groups.
- The changing modes and operation of criminal behaviour, the size and characteristics of the offender population, and pathways into offending.
- What is the impact of crime, including food fraud, on the UK food supply chain, and how can we reduce it?