Academics highlight how University research is helping to shape policing practice in the UK and beyond

Recently Dr Matt Tonkin and Richard Ilett from our Department of Criminology were invited to visit the Zhejiang Police College in Hangzhou China.

During their visit, they met with senior police officers and lecturers from the college, as well as delegates from Spain, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Mauritius - thereby strengthening international links.

They also delivered presentations to 150 Police recruits, highlighting how research by our University is helping to shape policing practice in the UK and beyond.

Richard’s talk was on the ‘Demilitarisation of Public Order Policing from 1819 to 2011’. This UK based input demonstrated to Police recruits that in such situations the use of less force can be more effective than stronger uses of force including extreme measures such as firearms. This was based on Richard’s PhD research with the School of History, Politics and International Relations.

Matt’s talk highlighted how contributions from the behavioural sciences can help the police to more effectively catch and convict serial offenders. His talk focused on three procedures (behavioural crime linkage, offender profiling and geographical profiling), highlighting how himself and colleagues have worked with police forces from around the world to enhance policing practice.