CGCP Police-Community Relations Research

Find out more about our police-community relations research

People
Julia Yesberg, Ben Bradford

Project Summary
This project explores the links between neighbourhood policing, trust, collective efficacy and violence crime. The project aims to develop a greater understanding of neighbourhood policing practices across London. Safer Neighbourhood Teams in approximately 150 wards in London will be surveyed, and interviews and field observations will also be carried out. This information will then be connected to ward-level collective efficacy and violent crime data to provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness, or not, of specific neighbourhood policing practices.  

Planned Outputs & Impact
Planned outputs include academic papers, conference papers, knowledge exchange activities, and public engagement. A large-scale end of project cocnference to engage stakeholders and wider audience will also take place.

Funder (where applicable)
This project is funded by the ESRC.

Duration
June 2019 - December 2021                                                                      

People
Ben Bradford, Arabella Kyprianides

Project Summary
This project is designed to assist UK police forces to understand and tackle the issue of perceived legitimacy of their practices among marginalised sections of the community, and thereby improve police-community relations, undermine the likelihood that police will use coercion, and empower democratic forms of police practice. This project draws from Procedural Justice and Social Identity theories and aims to expand upon existing understanding about police-public encounters. The research team is working closely with policing partners in three of the UK's largest police forces - the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands and West Yorkshire - observing routine interactions between the police and the public and conducting interviews with the people involved in those encounters, to interpret how they are experienced, processed, and judged. A second strand of the project will involve production of a series of fully immersive Virtual Reality vignettes, showing a variety of police-public interactions, that will be used in a series of experimental studies.

Partner Organisations
This project is being carried out in collaboration with research teams at Keele University and London School of Economics.

Planned Output & Impact
Planned outputs include academic papers, conference presentations, public engagement and knowledge-exchange activities. Engagement activities also include workshops with relevant police departments (e.g. Metropolitan Police Service and West Midlands Police), key national policing meetings, advisory and steering groups, and an end of project workshop held at IGCP.

Funder (where applicable)
This project is funded by the ESRC.

Duration
September 2018 -  August 2021

Links to Outputs / Deliverables

  • Kyprianides, A., Bradford, B., Stott, C. (2020). Policing the street population in the context of Covid19. The Municipal Journal.

People
Julia Yesberg, Ben Bradford

Project Summary
This British police, famously, operate largely unarmed, and have done so since the inception of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. However, recent terror attacks and an increase in serious violent crime have prompted moves to arm more officers and make armed police more visible on the streets. Very little is known about how such developments might be received by the public, or about how people judge weather arming more police is appropriate. This project, co-funded by MOPAC and the IGCP, comprises the first ever in-depth academic study of public reactions to armed police. The project will use survey based and experimental methods to explore how people think about armed police, whether they support the arming of more officers, and whether more police might bolster, or undermine, trust and legitimacy. 

Planned Outputs & Impact
Planned outputs include acdemic papers and conference presentations.

Funder (where applicable)
IGCP/MOPAC

Status
Live

Links to Outputs / Deliverables

People
Ben Bradford, Julia Yesberg, Arabella Kyprianides

Project Summary 
This piece of work is assessing how people respond to different use of force scenarios. Initial findings from this study were included in a CoP report to the NPCC in November 2019. 

Partner Organisations
College of Policing (CoP)

Planned Output & Impact
Academic publications and research findings feeding into CoP work on police use of force.

Funder
IGCP/College of Policing

Duration
October 2019 - Open-ended