Durham’s pioneering police scheme slashes reoffending rates

The Durham constabulary has been running a new scheme where offenders avoid prosecutions if they take part in a rehabilitation programme for issues such as substance abuse or mental health. To date more than 2,660 offenders who have committed offences such as burglary and assault have taken part in the scheme. The first results of the scheme found a 15 per cent point drop in reoffending after a period of two years in those who took part in rehabilitation in comparison to those who did not. Full results of the scheme are due to be published as part of a University of Cambridge study in 2020.

Source: The Guardian

School Exclusions and Knife Crime

This paper provides a summary of findings in response the below questions.

1. What is driving the current rise in school exclusions?
2. Is there a link between rising school exclusions and rising levels of knife crime?
3. What can be done to prevent exclusion from mainstream education, particularly of young people who may be at risk of involvement in serious violence?
4. What happens to young people when they are excluded from school? How do we effectively safeguard them and ensure they access effective education?

It also provides a range of practical recommendations which the Government should implement to help combat the problem and keep vulnerable children and young people safe.

For the full report click here.

Recent publications on Counter-Extremism

The independent Commission for Countering Extremism has published several reports on the subject of countering extremism:

Modernising and Mainstreaming: The contemporary British far-right.
Research by HOPE not Hate. By analysing the rhetoric espoused at a series of major far-right events across 2018 and comparing it to societal polling it becomes evident that large parts of the contemporary far-right’s platform – namely anti-Muslim politics, co-option of the free speech debate and an anti-elite populism – have widespread public support.

National Action: links between the far right, extremism and terrorism.
Research bu the Centre for Hate Studies, University of Leicester. In 2016, National Action made history for being the first far-right group to be proscribed in the UK. Investigating the group’s history, ideology and activities, this article considers how its commitment to a ‘pure’ form of nationalism helped it to transition from non-violent to violent extremism.

Overview of the far-right.
Research by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, Lancaster University. The paper provides an overview of the far-right in the UK by covering the various ideological strains that inhabit the far-right space as well as some of their different aims and objectives. The paper also sets out some of the available indicators of the scale of far-right support in the UK.

Talking our way out of conflict: critical reflections on ‘mediated dialogue’ as a tool for secondary level Countering Violent Extremism (CVE).
Research by University of Manchester and Tim Parry Jonathan Ball Peace Foundation. The paper reflects on a researcher-practitioner collaboration in conducting a mediated dialogue between young people from an ‘Islamist’ milieu and from an ‘extreme right’ milieu. It situates the intervention in the literature on the effectiveness of intergroup contact in reducing prejudice and on social cohesion and suggests how it might be developed for use in community led counter extremism practice.

Violent extremism tactics and the ideology of the secretarian far left.
Research by King’s College London, the University of Bristol and Goldsmiths University of London into British far-left secretarian groups. These groups were defined as small, ideologically homogeneous groups which reject parliamentary politics as a route to socialism and instead aspire to become ‘vanguard parties’. There was a strong correlation between the belief system disseminated by the secretarian far left – termed as ‘revolutionary workerism’ – and sympathy with violent extremism tactics. There was also a positive relationship between ‘anti-imperialist’ geopolitical ideology and sympathy for violent extremism, in that those that saw the US and the UK as a greater threat to world peace than NATO strategic adversaries such as North Korea.

Extremism in England and Wales: Statistical summary of responses.
The Commission for Countering Extremism carried out a consultation between November 2018 and January 2019 that aimed to improve understanding of extremism and its impact on individuals, communities and wider society. The Commission was interested in two cross-cutting issues, the interaction between online and offline spaces, as well as the drivers of extremism. The call for evidence asked for information on 5 themes:

• Public understanding of extremism.
• The scale of extremism.
• Extremists’ objectives and tactics.
• Harms caused by extremism.
• The current response to extremism.

The criminal careers of those imprisoned for hate crime in the UK

The full paper from the European Journal of Criminology can be found here.

Abstract

Hate crime research has increased, but there are very few studies examining hate crime offenders. It is, therefore, difficult to determine to what extent those who perpetrate this offence might be different from those who have not committed hate crime. This study is the first to provide an account of the demographics and criminal histories of those serving time in prison for committing a hate crime. It is based on a large complete population of offenders in the UK. Hate crime offenders released from prison were found to have prolific criminal careers, having committed a wide range and large number of different types of offences. When compared with those who committed a general (non-hate) violent offence, violent hate crime offenders were significantly older and were considerably more prolific in their previous offending. Violent hate crime appeared quantitatively, as opposed to qualitatively, different from violent non-hate crime, but this was less clearly true when those who had committed public order hate crime were compared with other public order offenders. Interventions to reduce the later offending of violent hate crime offenders should be based on the effective interventions that exist for violent offenders, but should take into account knowledge about the surprisingly prolific criminal careers of hate crime offenders.

PTSD ‘at crisis levels’ among police officers

Research by Cambridge University and Police Care UK has revealed that in a study of 17,000 95% of officers and 67% of operational police staff have been exposed to traumatic events, of which 20% had reported symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD . It also found that two thirds of those with PTSD were unaware that they were suffering from it.

Other findings from the study are that PTSD rates almost five times higher in the police than in the general population, and that there is sufficient cause for concern that officers are given insufficient time to process traumatic incidents before being sent back out on the next call.

Source: BBC, Police Care UK

Police Workforce Wellbeing & Organisational Development

This report sets out the findings of the Police Foundation’s review of Organisational Development (OD) and its implications for police workforce wellbeing.

The report shows that following a period of substantial change, in particular a major reduction in resource and a shift (and in many areas an intensification) in demand, there are signs of a deterioration in the wellbeing of police officers and staff.

The report looks at the potential of the field of research and practice known as Organisational Development to address this problem. Organisational Development (OD) is an applied professional practice that focuses on how organisations can systematically enable good performance through the involvement of the entire workforce – all employees from top to bottom. It encourages organisations to constantly change and evolve and for programmes of change to involve the full and willing engagement of employees.

Employees should be central to OD initiatives. This is different to top-down leadership models in which the workforce is simply told what they must do to change. Suggestions and motivations for change from the frontline should be encouraged wherever possible. All employees should feel some sense of ownership towards the strategy of the entire organisation and this requires the senior staff to forego traditional hierarchies and power structures. OD is fundamentally a longterm and iterative approach that aims to substantially improve communication within the organisation and foster a learning culture among all employees.

The full report can be found here.

DCMS Committee holds the first evidence session of its new inquiry into Immersive and Addictive technologies, seeking an overview of issues with academics and researchers.

The enquiry examined the development of immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality and their impact on sport, entertainment and news. Further examination given to the addictive nature of some technologies and user engagement with gaming and social media.

Carrying Tasers increases police use of force

An experiment with City of London police found that, while rarely deployed, the presence of electroshock devices led to greater overall hostility in police-public interactions.

“We found that officers are more likely to be assaulted when carrying electroshock weaponry, and more likely to apply force,” said lead researcher Dr Barak Ariel from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“There was no increase in injury of suspects or complaints, suggesting it was not the police instigating hostilities. The presence of Tasers appears to provoke a pattern where suspects become more aggressive toward officers, who in turn respond more forcefully,” he said.

Hate crime law: Efficacy and CPS report

The CPS have recently published their annual hate crime report which brings together information on CPS performance in prosecuting racist and religious hate crime, homophobic and transphobic crime, crimes against the older person and disability hate crime.  It shows that this year, the number of convictions where there was a sentence uplift has exceeded the goals set out in the CPS 2020 business plan.  In addition, there have been overall increases in conviction rates and guilty pleas as well as reductions in the number of cases which end due to complainant issues.

Following the publication of the CPS report and the recently announced law commission review into hate crime, rightsinfo.org, a website that publishes news, views and information on human rights, published an article that explores the efficacy of hate crime laws – whether they actually help to tackle prejudice or whether they are something more symbolic.  The article examines the debate about how hate crime and hate incidents should be defined and notes that the interpretation taken by police when reporting an incident is quite broad, largely based on perception and from a victim-centred point of view.   It also notes the relatively few successful prosecutions in comparison to the large number of incidents reported as well as the under-reporting or under-recording amongst vulnerable or underrepresented groups such as Muslim communities.  The difficulty with prosecuting hate crimes, as highlighted by the article, is inherent in proving the motivation of hate itself.  Restorative justice is cited in the article as preferred by victims of hate crimes – as opposed to punitive justice – one way being to give victims the opportunity to directly talk to offenders, explaining how their criminal behaviour has affected them and to ask questions.  The article also goes on to explore whether misogyny is in fact a hate crime, a debate that has been sparked by NPCC chief Sarah Thornton’s recent comments at an annual conference as well as criminalising the act of ‘upskirting’.  Finally, the article concludes that the value of hate crime laws lies in the fact that they are symbolic, providing an unequivocal message that disapproves of hate and prejudice, but that it remains to be seen in the long-term whether or not this is enough to address the root causes of prejudice.

Independent Research into Hate Crime Victims’ Experiences of Policing

This research was carried out after HMIC recommendations were made following a report that found that police response to hate crimes is inconsistent.  The main findings of the independent research were that:

• Victims would like police officers and staff to be better at recognising hate crime through proper recording and appropriate responses
• Victims would like better trained officers to deal with them, who show awareness and understanding of individual circumstances
• Victims would like clear information about support services in a format they can understand.

The research comes to these conclusions after exploring how police record hate crime, the difficulties in recognising hate crime, the effects of hate crime including the need for victim support and the reasons why people don’t always report hate crime.

Source: HMICFRS