Search results

The police killing of George Floyd and other high-profile incidents of force sparked massive protests around the world. Amidst eroding public perceptions of police legitimacy, politicians and activists have sought to achieve systemic change. Over the past year, several cities in the United States have implemented various police reform initiatives, including reallocating resources, cutting budgets, and downsizing specialized units. As a result of these changes, the “defund the police” movement may have far-reaching consequences on police culture, especially within specialized units most affected by budget and resource changes. Furthermore, as fentanyl overdoses are surging and the American opioid crisis continues, specialized drug investigation units face a host of challenges in responding to increases in drug-related crime in the aftermath of “defund the police”. Therefore, this study aims to examine the experiences of a Drug Investigation Section in a large metropolitan city.

This study uses data from semi-structured interviews conducted between October 2021 to May 2022. The results of this study provide a thematic analysis that explores the narcotics detectives' perceptions of key features of police culture, as well as how current challenges affect those perceptions.

Key features of the police culture were noticeably absent from detectives' responses, including an overemphasis on danger, machismo, conservatism, and social isolation. Elements of cynicism, group solidarity, and a mission/action-orientation, did emerge. The context of “defund the police” did little to alter their perceptions, except for heightening cynicism and negative perceptions of politicians and prosecutors (a form of “us vs them”, but not involving citizens). The interviews also revealed various other changes that have occurred in recent years that have adversely affected the section's traditional investigative capabilities, especially with regard to illicit fentanyl distribution, though the addition of an intelligence analyst minimized those negative effects.

This study adds to the scarce research on contemporary police culture in specialized units, especially in the aftermath of the “defund the police” movement, providing a glimpse into its context within a drug investigation section and its potential effects on police culture and narcotics investigations.

In 2016, the oversight body for policing in England and Wales reported a national shortage of 5,000 qualified detectives and other investigators. Commissioned by the National Police Chiefs Council, this research critically assessed initiatives taken by the Police Service of England and Wales since that time to remedy that shortfall. The purpose of this study is to answer the question, “To what extent can fast-track investigator recruitment and training schemes enhance the PSEW’s investigative capacity and capability?”

Between 2019 and 2020, the authors examined four cases in England and Wales. Three were novel fast-track programmes for new joiners. The fourth was an investigator resilience programme. This study was qualitative and interpretive in nature. The authors carried out systematic reviews of the literature on investigative policy and detective work. The authors reviewed internal evaluations completed by Forces A, B and C. The authors interviewed respondents (n = 82) and supplemented the interview data with survey data (n = 45; N = 127); the authors analysed the data thematically and reviewed the findings in the context of systems theory and social identity theory.

The major themes identified by the analysis presented in this study were marketing and recruitment, attrition and progression, acceptance of the trainees, training and trainees’ welfare and well-being. The programmes were not as successful as they might have been because of systems failures. Principally, ineffective coordination of the programmes with other elements of the forces on which their success also relied (such as training, human resources and detective, departments). A critical limiting factor was the lack of experienced, skilled detectives able to train, support and mentor the trainees.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the efficacy of a whole systems approach to organisational change. This study evidences the crisis in police investigative practice that limits the service that the police can provide to victims and communities and ultimately threatens police legitimacy. This study provides insights from police practitioners into detective work in the modern era and highlights areas where improvement is necessary. The research on which this study is based was commissioned by the National Police Chiefs Council. Thus, there is institutional buy in to its findings.

With its roots firmly in empiricism, this paper presents the first scholarly evaluation of the police's attempts to make up a massive shortfall in investigators. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the first attempt to explain the challenges the police faced in this context, thematically. This study’s focus on systems and on human behaviour is intended to inform a wide audience beyond British policing.

This article explores how homicide detectives make sense of and manipulate multiple physical, digital and informational artefacts when assembling case narratives. The authors introduce the concept of mosaicking to illuminate how different modes of information, deriving from different investigative methods, are used in concert at key moments of the investigative process – defining what type of crime has occurred; the incrimination and elimination of suspects; and decisions to charge key suspects.

The data qualitatively analysed include several hundred case papers, interview transcripts (n = 144) and detailed ethnographic fieldnotes relating to 44 homicide investigations across four police services. These were collected during a four-year ethnographic study of the use of forensic sciences and technologies (FSTs) in British homicide investigations.

Mosaicking describes how investigators blend and combine information, intelligence and evidence generated via different techniques and methods, to make sense of “who did what to whom and why?” Through processes of convergent and divergent mosaicking, detectives are able to “lean” on different kinds of material to reinforce or connect key points of evidence or intelligence.

The findings fill a gap in knowledge about how investigators blend and composite diverse sources of information in the construction of case narratives. The findings present a more complex and nuanced understanding of the epistemological and interpretative work conducted by contemporary detectives, given the array of investigative technologies they increasingly have at their disposal.

The public fascination for private investigators has led to an abundance of imagery in popular culture media. This study aims to examine the views of practising private investigators regarding their professional images of dirty work.

To fill the gap in the literature, this study used data collected from semi-structured interviews with 33 industry practitioners from 3 Australian states. The paper investigates private investigator’s perceptions about themselves/job roles and the public perceptions of private investigators in Australia. Interviews were recorded and transcripts created. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken.

Private investigators were drawn from a range of professions, including public policing and government regulation. The findings indicate that the reality differs from the images typically portrayed in popular culture. Interviewees discussed the contrasts between media images and reality, providing a more complex portrayal of private investigation and what private investigators find satisfying and challenging about their work.

This study is helpful for improving the understanding of private policing, the media views of policing, those who conduct work within an environment considered to be tainted and their views of self.

Using a qualitative research design, this paper offers insights into the challenges facing private investigators and how they reconcile being in a tainted occupation with providing a necessary service to the community.

The system in England and Wales involves a joint agency response to the sudden and unexpected death of a child (SUDC) and, for various reasons, the police contribution to that investigation is sometimes inadequate. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the dilemmas which explain this inadequacy.

The arguments presented in the paper are made on the basis of empirically derived findings, drawing from original research based upon qualitative interviews with nine senior detectives working in the areas of child abuse or major crime, as well as focus groups of senior detectives, and a limited contribution from pathologists.

This paper explores whether there is an investigative deficit in respect of potential child homicide when compared to an adult domestic homicide, and it concludes that in some areas the most vulnerable people in society may be at risk because of issues such as inadequate training, inflexible force policies and under-resourced police investigation of child death.

It is possible to kill a child and leave few, if any, physical clues on the body. To determine if homicide is the cause of death, the overall police investigation therefore has to be of high quality to identify any clues that have been left by the perpetrator at the scene or in other ways. It is usual for Child Abuse Investigation Unit detectives to investigate SUDC but they are often trying to do so with little training and few resources. Cuts to police service budgets since 2010 have affected all elements of policing, including Major Crime Teams. As a result, these teams are more discerning about which cases they take on and there is evidence they are not taking on child death investigations even if there are suspicions of homicide. The findings reveal important implications for police investigative training and a clear and significant deficit in the investigative resources available to the lead investigator on a SUDC investigation which may or may not be a homicide, compared with the resources available to the senior investigating officer on a straightforward domestic homicide when the victim is an adult. If homicide is missed, then siblings or future siblings with that family may be left at risk of harm. The College of Policing suggested standards for SUDC investigation are sometimes not being adhered to in respect of training and resources.

The paper is informed by original qualitative research conducted in 2019. The findings are of value to police policy makers, the College of Policing, and police senior leadership teams.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a variety of related methods for helping with criminal (cold) case investigations. Despite the best efforts of police investigations, many cases around the world run out of leads and go cold. While many police departments around the world have developed specialist groups and task forces, academics have also been developing new methods that can assist with investigations.

Cold cases, by their very nature, typically comprise incomplete data sets that many traditional statistical methods are not suited to. Groups of researchers have therefore developed temporal, dynamic analysis methods to offer new insights into criminal investigations. These methods are combined into a timeline toolkit and are outlined in the current paper.

Methods from the timeline toolkit have already been successfully applied to many cold cases, turning them back into current cases. In this paper, two real-world cold cases are analysed with methods from the timeline toolkit to provide examples of how these methods can be applied in further cold cases.

Methods from the timeline toolkit provide a novel approach to investigating current and cold cases. This review provides academics and practitioners with a guide to begin using and developing these methods and forming successful collaborations with police departments and cold case task forces. The methods are also suitable for wider groups and to use in their investigations.

This chapter introduces the two main topics of ‘entrepreneurial policing’ and ‘criminal entrepreneurship’ and begins in Section 1.1 by considering the concept and scope of entrepreneurial policing around which this monograph is organised. Its definition and ontological development are considered. Thereafter, the author briefly discuss what entrepreneurship is (and is not) and set out examples of entrepreneurship of interest to policing, including – ‘Corporate’ and ‘Team’ Entrepreneurship, ‘Intrapreneurship’, ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Animateurship’, ‘Civic Entrepreneurship’, and ‘Public Service Entrepreneurship’. The author then discusses why entrepreneurship is of critical importance to the police service and discuss worked examples. Having developed a basic understanding of the power and utility of entrepreneurship, then in more detail what the term entrepreneurial policing means and how it evolved in practice and in the academic literature are considered. In Section 1.2, the foundations of entrepreneurial policing considering its ontological and epistemological development from ‘New Public Management’ to ‘New Entrepreneurialism’ and also the influence of the merging literatures of ‘Criminal Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Entrepreneurial Leadership’ are critically examined. In Section 1.3, our consideration to include a more nuanced understanding of the what is referred to as the ‘Entrepreneurship–Policing Nexus’ including consideration of the influence of dyslexia on policing and crime and the power of the ‘Entrepreneurial’ and ‘Gangster’ dreams on entrepreneurial motivation and propensity are expanded. In Section 1.4, an attempt is made to identify who the stakeholders of this new policing philosophy are? Finally, in Section 1.5, the chapter takeaway points which both articulates and confirms the inherent importance of entrepreneurship in policing and criminal contexts are discussed and detailed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a study which explored the knowledge and attitudes of university students towards people living with dementia, and developed and tested a dementia awareness workshop, dementia detectives: university edition, designed to improve knowledge and foster positive attitudes to dementia in students.

Dementia detectives: university edition was launched during dementia awareness week and five workshops were delivered to university students. In total, 42 participants attended and completed a knowledge and attitude measure before and after the workshop, as well as rating the workshop with regards to satisfaction, relevance, understanding and whether they would recommend the workshop to friends.

Students perceived living with dementia to be a negative and stigmatised experience. The workshop scored highly in terms of satisfaction, relevance and understanding and all students stated that they would recommend the workshop to others. Paired t-tests found significant improvements in self-assessed dementia knowledge.

This was a pilot evaluation and further testing with larger samples is required.

The workshop meets the requirements for tier 1 dementia education and training as outlined in the Dementia Core Skills and Knowledge Framework published by the Department of Health.

The workshop has the potential to increase knowledge, change attitudes, improve empathy and contribute to the development of a dementia aware workforce through undergraduate education.

Dementia detectives: university edition is a novel interactive method of dementia education and training.

In the past decade, the concept and theory of “Entrepreneurial Policing” has emerged in academic and policing circles, particularly in a UK context. The purpose of this paper is to collect salient articles from extant but diverse literatures such as policing and criminology to synthesise a literature on it, focussing upon conceptual, theoretical and practical elements.

The approach is based on synthesising a literature using an in-depth review methodology and on analysing it to develop new insights into theoretical elements.

The findings are that the literature base is diverse and comes from a variety of policing, criminology, entrepreneurship, management, leadership and policy journals. There is a protean literature but at present little conceptual or theoretical clarity.

There is a need for further empirical research in the form of qualitative face-to-face interviews to be conducted to develop typologies, taxonomies and topographies of entrepreneurial policing (EP). Developing illustrative case studies and teaching cases will educate new generations of police officers into the power and potential of EP as a change agent. This necessitates a change of policing structures, philosophies, processes and practices. From such theoretical groundwork, it is possible at a universal theory of what constitutes EP can be developed and tested. There is a need for commissioned research into the potentially revolutionary phenomenon; a text book and for training courses and seminars on the topic.

There are a number of practical implications for policing and policy practitioners and for its application in the future. From a policing perspective, an increased awareness of EP and criminal entrepreneurship can have positive outcomes in terms of new policing structures, philosophies, methodologies, practices and processes. From a criminal perspective, it heralds a better understanding of entrepreneurial crime, entrepreneurial criminals and organised crime groups. This could result in entrepreneurship educational programmes for police officers, senior officers and other law enforcement personnel and entrepreneurship awareness training for prisoners and ex-offenders and new avenues for utilising entrepreneurship as a diversion out of crime.

There are also a number of social implications including the need for policy makers and politicians to be aware of the policing–entrepreneurship nexus and to award financial grants to encourage enterprising behaviour across the criminal justice system; encourage entrepreneurs to give back to their local communities; and increase the number of social enterprises in under-privileged communities.

This review is the first of its kind to deal specifically with EP and its evolution.