ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre researchers have shared new findings from Centre projects at a national criminology conference.
22 July 2024
Speaking at the British Society of Criminology Conference in Glasgow, the Centre team provided insights on key challenges, including public trust in local policing, county lines, online child sexual victimisation, and service provision for vulnerable groups in contact with the police in Bradford.
Minimum Policing Standard
Having presented findings at a recent webinar, Professor Ben Bradford, Professor Adam Crawford, Dr David Rowlands and Dr Christine A Weirich spoke about what the public think the core functions of the police are.
Inspired by research that developed a Minimum Income Standard, the project team aimed to establish consensus on a set of activities and services that the police should be able to provide to everyone – a ‘minimum policing standard’. Having conducted three iterative rounds of focus groups in four UK locations, the team revealed broad agreement on the importance of responding to local problems, neighbourhood police presence, engagement and fair treatment, all of which were observed to be lacking.
The speakers also revealed that how police performance is measured is at odds with how the public think about the service.
County Lines
Dr Chris Devany and Dr Tobias Kammersgaard shared new findings from the Centre’s County lines policing and vulnerability project, which explores how the police understand and respond to the involvement of young people in drug markets in the UK.
They spoke about how young people that are involved in selling, transporting, or storing illicit drugs, who previously would be perceived as ‘offenders’, are now, under certain circumstances, perceived as ‘victims of exploitation’, who have been coerced or groomed into drug dealing by organised crime groups. However, there are inconsistencies in how different police forces understand and respond to the involvement of young people in drug markets in the UK. The researchers noted that police officers are having to make decisions about the boundaries of ‘victimhood’.
Online child sexual victimisation (OCSV)
Dr Larissa Engelmann and Dr Christine A Weirich spoke of the lack of knowledge about how services identify, assess, refer and respond to online child sexual victimisation. Their conference presentation focused on the Centre’s OCSV project. The project aims to develop a dedicated quality standards tool for online child sexual abuse with the community at the heart of it.
Drs Engelmann and Weirich covered the process of creating this tool with members of the local community. They explored the locally defined and ranked priorities and reflected on the important role children, young people and parents play in this work.
Bradford mapping research: service provision for vulnerable groups in contact with the police
Focusing on the Centre’s place-based research, Dr Engelmann and Dr Rowlands also presented on a project that seeks to map service provision for vulnerable groups in contact with the police in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK.
The speakers looked at two case study areas in Bradford. They highlighted the impact of localised vulnerabilities on how partnerships that attempt to respond to vulnerability are formed and sustained. They also spoke about the power and limitations of local community organisations, and future opportunities and challenges.
Roundtable
The Centre also hosted a round table about its work that addressed two questions:
- To what extent does vulnerability serve as a valuable shared language around which to organise service provision or as a stigmatising and disempowering term?
- What is the political space and appetite within public discourse and frontline buy-in for policing reform that centres on vulnerability and harm reduction?
“We’ve uncovered some valuable learnings for all services”
Centre Co-Director Professor Adam Crawford, said “As our first round of projects draw to a conclusion, we’ve uncovered some valuable learnings for services that attempt to respond to vulnerabilities, as well as researchers. While the projects speak to different subject areas, there are significant crossovers between them that have implications for organisations and vulnerable people going forward.
“We’d encourage everyone to look out for our summary reports and future webinars on these topics that will be coming in the autumn.”
The British Society of Criminology Conference 2024 took place from 10-12 July in Glasgow, UK.