Law enforcement
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Language: English
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- How can behavioural science be applied to deter, detect, and disrupt terrorists using or targeting transport systems?
- How can policing co-develop useful predictive models with public debate and consent?
- What, if any, are the emerging risks to personal privacy and victim intrusion from new digital forensic technologies?
- How can policing improve the process and workflow surrounding digital forensics, including democratising the ability to run safe, rapid and effective forensics at a crime scene?
- What is the best-in-class digital tooling available for the forensic analysis of text, media and metadata?
- What cybersecurity threats exist for the use of drones in policing and how can they be mitigated?
- What novel millimetric wave sensing technologies can be used by policing to identify hidden objects??
- What is the best practice for conducting suspect interviews in the case of RASSO (Rape and Serious Sexual Offences) and VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) investigations?
- Are current national police interview models fit for purpose when conducting interviews with vulnerable suspects, such as those who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Personality Disorder or mental health conditions?
- How does the use of secure digital recording devices in Voluntary Attender Interviews with suspects impact interview quality, investigation outcome and jury decisions?
- What are the best practices for conducting pre-interview assessments to identify vulnerability or intimidation to determine appropriate ‘special measures’ and communication?
- How can policing best implement and utilise situational awareness within policing practices?
- How can policing capitalise on geospatial technologies to deliver new information forms that can enhance situational awareness and decision making?
- How can candidate technologies for lawful knife detection and vehicle interdiction achieve usable size, weight, and power configurations?
- 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?
- What computational and analytical techniques can deliver accurate, large scale, automated image capture, processing, and amalgamation, while maintaining privacy and proportionality?
- 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 legal and ethical challenges does the use of autonomous systems in policing face as robots become more able to operate independently?
- How can policing use advances in robotics to reduce or remove the need for police officers to enter hazardous environments e.g., water, fire, electrical, natural disaster, CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear)? Further, how can a seamless and secure operation be enabled in such environments?
- How can we best communicate and understand the public’s perception of autonomous vehicles and drone usage in policing?
- What digital forensic advances can support crypto-currency investigations?
- What are the potential criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics?
- What are the potential investigative opportunities for policing through the use of emerging biometrics, including the current limits of biometrics to identify and trace individuals?
- What emerging biological or behavioural measurements and calculations can be used to ascertain or impersonate a person’s identity?
- What methods and policies could policing use to identify deepfakes rapidly and automatically, while retaining victim privacy?
- What are the safety and line-of-sight flying concerns regarding the use of drones in policing and how can these be mitigated?
- What technologies can assist police officers in vehicle interdiction relating to e-scooter and e-bike crime?
- How can robotics expedite policing activities or complement the existing provision, for example, to effectively support forensic specialists identify, record, or assess marks across a crime scene?
- How can policing improve our workforce vetting processes to mitigate organisational risk?
- Preventing incidents of violence against officers and staff
- 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?
- Use of canines and alternatives for detection.
- Clothing and equipment for police and first responders with maximum strength, lightness, wearability and protection.
- How can policing better service the public and victims so that they have easy and timely access to information, including possible self-service options relating to case progress?
- How can policing demonstrate an end-to-end chain of evidence across the criminal justice system (e.g., using blockchain technology)?
- How can the policing further deliver seamless interaction with the Crown Prosecution Service and legal representatives?
- How can policing advance its interconnectivity both within policing (e.g., AI supported call and response routing), on multi-modal devices, and across organisations?
- How should enriched data produced from the fusion/linkage of multiple data sources be presented to users to enable rapid and effective decision making?
- How much weight should policing place in predictive algorithms and what is the evidence base for the successful use of these techniques?
- How can policing measure and demonstrate the level of accuracy in predictive algorithms?
- How can policing ensure transparency in decision-making, so it is open to challenge?
- What are the value and limits of emerging AI technologies such as ChatGPT in policing?
- How can the police service further develop capabilities in automatic redaction and selective extraction from phones?
- How can the police service adapt its analytical systems in novel ways to better create, store and utilise diverse types and sources of data?
- How can the police service maximise opportunities in Robotic Process Automation to streamline analytical processes in the near-term?
- From what other sources can police enrich their own analytical data where it is legal and proportionate to do so?
- What methods can be applied to increase the precision of policing’s risk modelling and subsequent actions undertaken?
- How can policing best assess and evidence the benefits of crime prevention initiatives?
- What technologies can be used to prevent crimes online, including the online mobilisation towards violence and terrorism?
- 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?
- In what areas of policing can we democratise the science and technology so that it can be used by many non-specialists?
- Developing and maintaining an ethical culture in policing
- Understanding what alternative service delivery models are being used elsewhere that contribute to greater financial efficiency and improved policing outcomes
- Increasing the use of analytics within policing
- How effective policing contributes to a city’s economy and business/investment confidence in a city
- Improving victim and witness interactions with the police service, particularly in relation to violent crime and serious sexual offences
- Understanding the impact of social media on public confidence and perceptions of police legitimacy
- Improving investigative outcomes and detection rates, particularly in relation to crime with a digital footprint
- Improving the flow of community intelligence to the police
- Reducing the gap in confidence in the police which exists between different communities in London
- 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
- 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?
- 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 can we define and measure procedural justice and (subjective) fairness? How does this vary by jurisdiction, and protected characteristics?
- How do police activities – such as Release Under Investigation (RUI) – affect flows into the criminal courts?
- How do we best assist early advice and support services to deal with changes in legal need in the population and the demand for services? How do we measure the impact of early advice on short, medium, and longer-term outcomes, and the economic costs and benefits?
- When people seek advice, how do we ensure they find useful and accessible information that empowers them – either towards self-help, or to access the most appropriate services for their needs?
- Which groups struggle most to resolve their justice problems, either through inaction or difficulty accessing the justice system and wider support services?
- How effective are support structures, for example intermediaries, in facilitating access to justice for vulnerable people, including victims and witnesses?
- Approaches that deter people from getting involved in cyber crime, moving deeper into cyber crime and/or reoffending.
- Opportunities and capabilities to intervene and mitigate risks.
- Security in high throughput and heavily populated environments.
- Combating illicit markets.
- 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.
- Recruitment, progression, well-being and retention in the police and fire workforces.
- What methods for data fusion and linkage across datasets best retain the anonymity of identifiers?
- 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.
- 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.
- Monitoring and analysing threats and hazards at incident scenes in real time, including the use of multiple and non-traditional sources such as crowd sourcing and social media.
- How can police resources be better tailored to variations in work load?
- 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.
- Changes in the opportunity structure for crime and in the drivers of the tendency to criminal behaviour, whether social, innate or environmental.
- Reducing bureaucracy to lighten demand on front line officers
- Increasing the recruitment, retention and progression of high quality staff, particularly those with protected characteristics
- How can we better understand flows into the courts and tribunals system, reasons for entry, and the impact of external organisations and their activities?
- Understanding perceptions of organisational justice and fairness in relation to promotion and selection procedures
- What behavioural and technical interventions will improve the safety of public spaces and the public’s perception of their safety?
- What technologies can assist police officers in stand-off knife detection?
- Better understanding the end-to-end value of investment in policing technology
- Preventing offenders from inciting violence and promoting their actions through online channels
- Improving our ability to adopt digital innovations in policing
- Using digital channels to prevent and disrupt crime more effectively
- Supporting partners and communities to reduce crime and vulnerability
- What are the outcomes of receiving legal aid, and how do they vary by the type of service and time at which they were provided? What are the long-term outcomes for those who access and those who do not, but are eligible for legal aid?
- How does LawTech affect the productivity, cost effectiveness, and efficiency of different services and outputs in the legal sector?
- How do geographic, demographic, cultural, and other factors affect people’s ability to resolve their legal problems?
- How do different individuals and groups perceive their experiences of legal aid services? How does this vary by the nature of their legal problem, advice and support acquired, jurisdiction and outcome?
- Technology or techniques to identify prohibited and restricted articles (for example, people, money, drugs, tobacco, counterfeit goods and species that require a permit under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [CITES]).
- Simulants for safe detection equipment testing and canine training Identification of CBRNE materials.
- How can a One Health approach promote a cultural change to curb the expansion of illegal wildlife trafficking and implement solutions that will ultimately benefit humans and the planet, galvanising the role of protected species conservation and biodiversity on disease prevention and mitigation?
- Improving how public complaints and misconduct referrals are dealt with
- Increasing the attractiveness of the Met as a 21st century employer
- What makes an effective pre-sentence report (PSR)? How do PSR’s – including language usage – affect sentence length, type, and consistency? What factors influence the use of PSR’s – including judicial views and confidence – and why has this changed over time?
- How do changes in tariffs, including minimum and maximum sentence lengths or the way life tariffs are calculated, affect sentencing behaviour?
- How are tribunals affected by the policies and services of other government departments, and how can we better understand upstream decision-making processes? For example, regarding welfare policy.
- What are the needs and experiences of victims, defence witnesses, and those in distressing civil, family, or tribunal cases? How does this vary by protected characteristics, socio-economic or socio-demographic background and jurisdiction?
- How can policing best provide Chief Officers and deployed officers with real-time information about workforce and assets, including remote briefing capabilities and file transfer?
- Where are the notable gaps in the provision of legal advice and support, and how can we best intervene to help fill them? How do different advice and support services interact, share information, and refer individuals between organisations?
- How can we better understand drivers of demand in the justice system, so that we support early problem resolution where appropriate, whilst ensuring the formal justice system is accessible to those who need it?
- What ‘lab in a box’ or other similar technologies are available to the police for forensic crime scene investigations?
- How does case progression, case timeliness, cost-to-access (where appropriate), and eventual outcome vary by jurisdiction and case type? What works, at which stage, and for whom, to improve the efficiency of case progression?
- What methods can policing use to enable data fusion or linkage across datasets to enrich the evidence intelligence picture across both structured and unstructured sources?
- How can policing demonstrate that algorithms are fair and unbiased in using policing data?
- How can policing utilise smart assistants, such as to manage the logistics of police deployment and tasking or to ensure that victims and witnesses receive the best possible support?
- Understanding differences in victim satisfaction across London
- Understanding the cost of crime in London to communities and the public sector
- Better understanding productivity in policing, and how to improve the link between budget spend and policing outcomes
- Understanding what demand for policing services might look like in five and ten years from now
- Improving how we identify and communicate best practice approaches across law enforcement
- The ongoing role for ethics in relation to the police application of technological advances
- Public expectations and trust in relation to the capture and use of data within law enforcement
- Making best use of big data to predict events and trends that impact on policing
- Maximising opportunities from digital forensics in relation to crime prevention and detection
- Understanding how to most effectively operationalise restorative justice approaches
- Supporting officers to adapt to an investigative processes where they have ownership from initial contact through to resolution
- Understanding what the public need to know in relation to local policing activity
- Improving the quality of interactions between the police and members of the public
- 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 the use of technology support supervision, including remote supervision?
- 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 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 effective are different prison types, categories and functions, such as reception, training and resettlement, in meeting their core objectives?
- How can we measure the quality of case outcomes across different jurisdictions, types of cases, and for the individuals and organisations involved? Including whether the court or tribunal was the ‘right’ method of resolution.
- How well understood are entitlements under the Victims’ Code, including special measures and access to support services? How effective are these and how could we improve their effectiveness?
- What are the ethical considerations of LawTech and the enhanced usage of technology within the legal sector? What, if any, regulatory framework or guidelines are required to ensure the fair use and application of LawTech?
- How might technology shape the future requirements of, and services offered by, the legal profession and sector? How can LawTech and innovation support greater access to justice?
- How effective are industry mechanisms and frameworks in ensuring they resolve complaints and meet the wider regulatory needs of the legal services market and profession?
- 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?
- How do we improve legal awareness and capability in the population, so that people are able to identify they have a legal problem and seek appropriate help?
- How can we minimise the harm to those engaging with the family justice system? What factors affect the effectiveness of Domestic Violence Protection Orders and other measures in the Domestic Abuse Bill?
- What are people’s experiences of dealing with justice problems? How can they be supported to access and navigate the justice system, enforce their rights, and achieve the best outcomes? How does this vary by problem type, level of legal capability, and awareness of support?
- First responder capabilities and approaches to decontamination and recovery.
- 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):
- Improving speed and accuracy of existing forensic approaches (for example, rapid DNA profile extraction and analysing seized digital media).
- Strengthening the evidence base on the measurement of police productivity and how marginal changes in types of police spend can improve outcomes.
- Strengthening the evidence base on how the police can increase investigative outcomes and reduce attrition.
- Effective use by the police, fire and security services.
- Research and development relevant to legislative changes, for example the detection of drugs in vehicle drivers and the analysis and understanding of psychoactive substances.
- How social media can facilitate, monitor and discourage crime and recruitment into organised crime groups.