Research Brief: July 2026
- Darwin
- 24 minutes ago
- 25 min read
July has been busy!
This month’s research runs from money mules and neighbourhood policing to school holidays, AI safeguards, family liaison officers and what the public looks for in a chief. There are 22 papers in the reading pile, including one returning visitor from June.
As ever, we have separated what a study found from what its design allows us to conclude. A randomised trial can support a different kind of claim from a survey or interview study; that does not make the latter unimportant. It simply tells us whether we are looking at an effect, an association, an experience or a well-informed explanation-and what question should come next.
To make the brief easier to navigate, the studies are grouped under the nearest NPCC committee portfolio.
TL;DR Index
Reading note: ‘How confident can we be?’ is about the claim supported by the design, not a league table of good and bad research. Percentages are rounded where that makes the practical message easier to read.
Crime
Offending patterns and the quality of police response to people affected by crime.
Linking serial crimes: accuracy is only half the operational question
Setting: International evidence from 10 countries (most studies were from the UK)
🇬🇧 🇫🇮 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇯🇵 🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇮🇹 🇦🇺 🇿🇦
Who did it? Gauri Milind Kelkar, Christopher Jones and Jessica Woodhams.
What was the study about? This was a meta-analysis: a study that systematically brings together results from several earlier studies so the overall pattern can be estimated. It included 29 studies and 206 model results, covering research published to the end of 2022. Most studies concerned burglary or sexual assault and tested whether geography, modus operandi or combinations of behaviour could distinguish linked from unlinked offences.
What did it find? Geographical information and combined measures of modus operandi tended to perform best, although the strongest input varied by offence. Reported discrimination was often high. For example, geographical models for burglary produced an average ‘area under the curve’ of about .88. This score describes how well a model separates linked from unlinked cases: .50 is no better than chance and 1.00 is perfect separation. Even a high score did not always translate into a manageable number of false leads.
How confident can we be? Combining studies gives a valuable overview, but 79% of the included studies were judged at high risk of selection bias—meaning the cases included may have been systematically easier or different from the cases encountered in normal practice. Many used solved series or samples containing only known serial offenders, which can make performance look better than it would in live, unsolved data. Some offence types were represented by very few studies, and a single accuracy statistic can conceal how many candidate links an analyst must examine.
What does it mean in practice? Use models to prioritise human review, not to declare that crimes are linked. Before deployment, test on local unsolved cases and report operational measures: how many genuine links appear near the top, how many false alarms are produced and what workload follows.
You’ll be interested if… you work in crime linkage, behavioural investigation, serious sexual offences, burglary analysis or evaluate analytical software.
Domestic abuse: feeling heard was closely tied to satisfaction
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? Daniel Welch.
What was the study about? Thirty-eight people with recent police contact about domestic abuse completed an online survey distributed through specialist charities in South Wales, Gwent and Dyfed-Powys. The 89-item survey combined rating scales with open comments. The paper was published in 2026 but does not state the fieldwork dates.
What did it find? In this sample, satisfaction was positively associated with officers being approachable, listening and providing support. Feeling that officers were dismissive or judgemental had the strongest negative relationship with satisfaction. Participants described both positive and negative experiences; respect, empathy, validation, clarity and practical help featured repeatedly in how they judged the response.
How confident can we be? The mixed-method design gives direct insight into recent lived experience, but the sample is very small, self-selecting and recruited through support organisations. It did not include North Wales and was predominantly White British women. Correlations do not show that any single behaviour caused satisfaction, willingness to proceed or a case outcome.
What does it mean in practice? The first response is an operational intervention in its own right. Listening, respectful communication, clear explanations, validation and practical support are concrete behaviours that can be trained, supervised and reviewed. Feedback and body-worn video can help teams examine how those behaviours appear in practice.
You’ll be interested if… you lead domestic-abuse response, victim services, first-response training, supervision or work on victim engagement and withdrawal.
Criminal Justice
Interviewing, evidence and interventions across the criminal justice process.
SCAN did not reliably separate truthful from fabricated accounts
Setting: Slovenia 🇸🇮
Source: Inefficacy of the SCAN Technique in Discriminating Between Truthful and Fabricated Statements
Who did it? Igor Areh and Marija Umolac.
What was the study about? In Slovenia, 307 university students wrote either a truthful or fabricated account of a recent negative event. Four independent raters, blind to the truth, received ten hours of training and coded the statements using 11 Scientific Content Analysis-or SCAN-criteria. The paper was published in 2026; it does not report when data were collected.
What did it find? Agreement between raters was generally low. The total SCAN score did not differ between truthful and fabricated statements. Two individual criteria differed, but they were not coded reliably. Raters classified 71% of truthful accounts and 58% of fabricated accounts correctly; the latter is close to chance and the pattern may reflect a tendency to label statements truthful.
How confident can we be? For the narrow question tested, known ground truth, blind independent raters and a reasonably large sample are useful strengths. The exercise involved students, written statements and fabricated personal events rather than suspects and real investigations. It may not reproduce every way SCAN is taught or used. Even so, the result aligns with earlier independent research and gives no support for using the technique as a truth test.
What does it mean in practice? Do not use SCAN scores to decide whether a person is truthful, to close an enquiry or to direct intrusive action. Investigative decisions should rest on evidence-preserving interviews, corroboration and methods with demonstrated reliability.
You’ll be interested if… you work in investigative interviewing, intelligence assessment, training, professional practice or assurance of legacy techniques.
Sexual-assault interviews: what victim-survivors say would help
Setting: Australia 🇦🇺
Who did it? Gemma Hamilton and Dirkje Gerryts.
What was the study about? An Australian online survey ran from June to August 2025 and included 285 adult victim-survivors aged 18–71; 72% had reported their experience to police. Participants rated the importance or comfort of interview settings, support, communication and recognised interviewing techniques. The questions captured perceptions, not necessarily personal experience of every technique.
What did it find? A private, comfortable setting and a sense that the interviewer believed them were rated most important. Access to support, clear expectations, free narrative and accessibility were also highly valued. Participants were most comfortable being able to correct the interviewer and receiving regular emotional check-ins. Silence and long pauses, interviewer self-disclosure and context reinstatement were less comfortable on average.
How confident can we be? This is valuable direct input from victim-survivors across Australia. It does not test which technique produces the most complete or accurate evidence, or whether it improves case outcomes. Recruitment was self-selecting, the sample was predominantly cisgender women, and survey ratings cannot recreate the pressure of a real interview.
What does it mean in practice? Interview quality includes preparation and explanation as well as technique. Offer privacy, breaks and support; explain why pauses or memory prompts may be used; check understanding and emotional state; and make it safe to correct the interviewer. Preferences should inform-not replace-the evidential purpose of the interview.
You’ll be interested if… you interview victim-survivors, design sexual-offence services, train interviewers or review trauma-informed practice.
Therapeutic communities in Illinois prisons: promising, not final
Setting: United States 🇺🇸
Who did it? Damon M. Petrich, David E. Olson and Pamela Carey.
What was the study about? The researchers studied men released from Illinois prisons in 2018 and 2019. They compared participants from two prison-based therapeutic communities for substance-use disorder with similar men released from other prisons, using matching to balance observed characteristics. Arrest and reincarceration were measured at one and three years.
What did it find? Participation in both therapeutic communities was associated with lower general arrest and reincarceration at one and three years. The medium-security programme was also associated with lower violent, drug and domestic-abuse arrests. Differences reduced over time, suggesting that any benefit may weaken after release.
How confident can we be? Matching creates a more credible comparison than raw outcome rates, but people were not randomly allocated. Differences that were not measured-motivation, selection into the programme, prison environment or aftercare-may explain part of the result. The study covers men in one US state and compares programmes with ordinary imprisonment rather than a waiting list.
What does it mean in practice? Substance-use treatment in custody may support safer re-entry, but the pathway after release deserves equal attention. Track outcomes over several years, distinguish offence types and test how programme fidelity, security setting and community aftercare shape results.
You’ll be interested if… you work in prisons, probation, integrated offender management, substance-use treatment, re-entry or reducing repeat offending.
Perpetrator programme: thinking changed during participation
Setting: United States 🇺🇸
Who did it? Monica Solinas-Saunders and Drew Saunders.
What was the study about? The study followed 624 court-mandated participants in a cognitive-behavioural batterer intervention programme across five counties in one Midwestern US state. Participants completed repeated measures of criminal thinking during the programme and for up to two years, producing 1,717 observations.
What did it find? Criminal-thinking scores declined during participation and then appeared to stabilise rather than rebound after the programme. The study did not measure a corresponding change in domestic-abuse behaviour or reoffending.
How confident can we be? Repeated measures provide useful evidence of within-person cognitive change. Without a randomised or matched comparison group, the study cannot show that the programme caused the decline. Measures were self-reported, the sample was mostly male and White, and longer-term follow-up was very sparse-only six people contributed data at one year after completion.
What does it mean in practice? A standardised measure of thinking can be one indicator of progress, but it is not a proxy for victim safety or repeat offending. Programmes should combine proximal measures with completion, risk, police and victim outcomes, preserve fidelity and plan follow-up before participants disappear from the dataset.
You’ll be interested if… you commission perpetrator programmes, manage court mandates, assess domestic-abuse interventions or need measures of change before reoffending data mature.
Digital, data and technology
How AI and data-driven tools are governed, evaluated and used in practice.
Probabilistic AI: useful tools, unfinished safeguards
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Source: The Use of Probabilistic AI in Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System of England and Wales
Who did it? Temitope Lawal, Kyriakos N. Kotsoglou, Evdoxia Taka, Marion Oswald, Michele Sevegnani and Muffy Calder, for PROBabLE Futures.
What was the study about? The team interviewed 25 people from policing, prosecution, the Bar, government, oversight, research and technology providers between May 2025 and January 2026. It combined thematic analysis with a review of policies and system documentation to map how probabilistic AI is entering law enforcement and criminal justice in England and Wales.
What did it find? Participants described real value from carefully targeted tools, including transcription, redaction, vulnerability identification, crime linkage, accessibility and officer welfare. They also described governance and institutional capability developing more slowly than adoption. Recurring risks included automation bias, loss of professional skill, unclear accountability, poor data, opaque suppliers, weak testing, deepfakes and errors passing from one AI system into the next. The report makes 26 recommendations across government, PoliceAI, the College of Policing, CPS, judiciary, providers and researchers.
How confident can we be? This is a detailed qualitative map of a fast-moving system, not an impact evaluation. Its strength is the range and depth of expert perspectives and the practical connection between findings and recommendations. Its purposive sample is not statistically representative, probation was not represented, and interview evidence cannot tell us how often a risk occurs or whether a particular tool improves outcomes.
What does it mean in practice? Start with the operational problem and the standard of evidence it demands. Require evaluation under realistic conditions, publish limitations and error rates, record where AI touches evidence, maintain skills that still need human judgement and design review so people genuinely assess an output rather than merely approve it. ‘Human in the loop’ needs a job description.
You’ll be interested if… you buy, build, govern or use AI; oversee disclosure and evidence; design workforce training; or need an AI register and evaluation standard.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
Fairness, disproportionality and how training may influence police practice.
VR training on ethnic profiling: improvement may begin with discomfort
Setting: Netherlands 🇳🇱
Who did it? Bas Böing, Peter W. De Vries, Stéphanie M. van den Berg and Ellen Giebels.
What was the study about? The ten-month Dutch study involved 519 officers at nine police stations. Stations received one VR session, three repeated sessions or no training, with surveys before training, after sessions and six months after the final session. Assignment reflected station characteristics rather than random allocation.
What did it find? A single session mainly improved knowledge and psychological safety. Repeated training initially produced less favourable ratings of attitudes and individual and group confidence than one-off training, but it was the repeated condition that showed sustained longer-term gains in attitudes and perceived effectiveness. Repetition did not add a clear psychological-safety benefit.
How confident can we be? Repeated measurement and multiple stations strengthen the study. The team also preregistered the research—recording the main questions and analysis plan before seeing the results—and made the data openly available. The stations were purposively rather than randomly assigned, outcomes were self-reported and only 245 participants completed the final survey. The research did not measure actual stops or public experience, so it supports a plausible training-development pattern, not proof of changed policing behaviour.
What does it mean in practice? One-off training can raise awareness, but durable development may need repetition, reflection and time. A temporary dip in confidence need not mean failure: it may reflect a more realistic appreciation of the task. Support that phase and pair self-report with stop data, supervision, complaints or observed practice.
You’ll be interested if… you commission stop-and-search, disproportionality or immersive training and need to judge both immediate reactions and longer-term change.
Finance
Commercial models, contracting and accountability in operational services.
Outsourcing 999 services: contracts contain discretion too
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? Adam White.
What was the study about? The article examines Lincolnshire Police’s £229 million strategic partnership with G4S, which ran from April 2012 to March 2022, focusing on 999 calls and the force control room. Its main evidence is 13 interviews with senior police, staff and G4S participants conducted between September 2022 and January 2023, supported by public and internal performance data and earlier interviews.
What did it find? Performance targets did not simply control the partnership. Participants described adjusting targets to improve delivery or accommodate demand-‘contractual discretion’-and sometimes needing to redraw the contract when existing terms blocked a workable response-‘non-contractual discretion’. The partnership mixed achievements and problems and ultimately ended with the service returning to police control.
How confident can we be? This is a rich case study of a rare long-term arrangement. It is not a comparison showing that outsourcing performs better or worse than in-house delivery. The senior, purposive sample is small and retrospective; interviewees may remember or frame events differently. The conceptual account is useful for understanding governance, but should not be generalised mechanically to other contracts.
What does it mean in practice? Write for change as well as for steady state. Contracts for operational services need clear data access, escalation, public-interest safeguards, agreed ways to change targets and credible exit arrangements. Governance should preserve room to respond to demand without making accountability disappear between organisations.
You’ll be interested if… you commission control-room or other police services, manage strategic suppliers, set performance regimes or plan insourcing and contract exit.
Local Policing
Place, visibility, neighbourhood work and community-facing demand.
School holidays change the crime mix, not just the crime total
Setting: Sweden 🇸🇪
Who did it? Niklas Jakobsson, Manne Gerell, Per Kristensson and Siri Jakobsson Støre.
What was the study about? The researchers used the staggered timing of Sweden’s winter sports break as a natural comparison. They analysed reported crime across all 290 municipalities for 208 weeks from 2021 to 2024, 60,320 municipality-weeks in total and compared places on holiday with places that were not yet on holiday.
What did it find? Reported assaults fell by about 13% during the break. The reduction was concentrated among children and young people: about 46% for ages 7–14 and 32% for ages 15–17, with no clear reduction for younger children or adults. Residential burglary rose by about 14%, and crime increased in skiing destinations receiving visitors. The analysis found no clear sign that crime simply moved to the week before or after.
How confident can we be? Staggered dates, checks for pre-existing trends and several robustness tests make this stronger than a simple before-and-after comparison. It is still not a randomised experiment. It relies on recorded crime, covers selected offences and cannot rule out every change in reporting or movement between places. The most defensible conclusion is that the break caused a change in the pattern of recorded crime in this setting.
What does it mean in practice? School calendars can be treated as a quantifiable operational variable. Youth assault prevention may be most valuable around school-time routines, while burglary prevention and patrol planning can shift towards residential areas and visitor destinations during breaks.
You’ll be interested if… you plan seasonal demand, school and youth safety, burglary prevention, neighbourhood patrols or policing in tourist destinations.
Focused foot patrol in Chile: a useful lesson in delivery
Setting: Chile 🇨🇱
Who did it? Cristóbal Weinborn, David Weisburd, Álvaro Pérez and Barak Ariel.
What was the study about? In Santiago, 159 street segments were identified using both crime frequency and harm. Forty-nine were randomly assigned to receive three 15-minute foot-patrol visits a day and 110 to usual policing. The experiment ran from August 2023 to January 2024, following a six-month baseline.
What did it find? Assignment to the patrol programme did not produce a statistically clear reduction in overall crime frequency or harm—in other words, the observed difference was too uncertain to rule out chance. Delivery was much lower than planned: officers completed about 30% of scheduled visits, averaging 0.88 visits a day rather than three. A secondary analysis found a reduction in a group of visible street offences—assault, public alcohol or drug consumption and unlicensed street vending—but this was not the experiment’s main outcome.
How confident can we be? The researchers assigned street segments by chance, giving the study a strong foundation for comparing the groups. Low delivery, some activity in control locations and operational changes after allocation make the main test harder to interpret. The clearest conclusion is that the programme as delivered did not reduce aggregate crime or harm. The offence-specific result is promising, but exploratory and in need of a better-delivered replication.
What does it mean in practice? The amount of patrol given is part of the intervention, not an administrative footnote. Hotspot trials need visit tracking, supervision and a plan for control-area contamination but how much of that is repeatable in day-to-day policing? Reporting both the assignment and the patrol actually delivered gives leaders a fairer account of whether the idea or the implementation fell short. The problem with hotspot policing may not be the idea so much as whether it can be delivered as conceived.
You’ll be interested if… you commission hotspot patrol, use harm indexes, run field trials or need to diagnose why an apparently sound tactic did not move the main outcome.
Neighbourhood policing: familiar ingredients, uneven recipe
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? Roger Arditti, B. S. Blackburn, Robin Bryant and Hannah Lewis.
What was the study about? The researchers interviewed or held focus groups with 28 Metropolitan Police participants between June and September 2021. They included PCSOs, dedicated ward officers, supervisors, senior leaders and chairs of Safer Neighbourhood Boards, and discussed neighbourhood practice during 2020–22.
What did it find? Participants broadly agreed that visibility, engagement and problem-solving belong at the centre of neighbourhood policing. They did not share a consistent definition or doctrine for how those ideas should operate. Role ambiguity, abstract expectations, resource pressure, training gaps and uneven delivery recurred, even while participants saw the function as essential to trust and local connection.
How confident can we be? The study gathers perspectives across ranks and includes some community representation, giving a useful picture of one large force at one point in time. Participation was purposive and voluntary, the sample was small and mostly white and male, and the study did not test outcomes. It cannot tell us that one definition or operating model produces better trust or crime outcomes.
What does it mean in practice? A neighbourhood promise needs an operational minimum: what teams own, what time is protected, how problems are selected, how communities influence priorities and what good work looks like. Local flexibility is valuable, but it works better when it starts from shared foundations.
You’ll be interested if… you lead neighbourhood teams, design operating models, protect abstractions from becoming slogans or assess delivery against the neighbourhood policing guarantee.
Police as mental-health responders: a system still finding its footing
Setting: Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Guyana 🇨🇦 🇦🇺 🇬🇧 🇬🇾
Who did it? Tyson Alker, Kelly Hine, Nadine McKillop and Tim Prenzler.
What was the study about? The systematic review included 20 peer-reviewed empirical studies from Commonwealth countries, focused on contemporary police encounters with people experiencing mental illness. Eight databases were searched using a documented process for finding, screening and assessing studies, and two reviewers checked the evidence.
What did it find? Encounters were often crisis-driven and involved people with previous police contact. Arrest, force and involuntary transport remained common possible outcomes. Officers described limited training, unclear guidance and service gaps; people with lived experience described fear, distrust and crisis behaviour being misunderstood. Crisis-intervention and co-response approaches showed some encouraging results, particularly around force, but evidence on arrest and transport was mixed.
How confident can we be? The systematic method gives a clear view of the available literature. The underlying evidence is small, heterogeneous and mainly descriptive, with different populations, measures and service systems. It is limited to English-language Commonwealth studies and cannot establish that one response model is best.
What does it mean in practice? Police training should help officers recognise how crisis can present, but training alone cannot create a health pathway. Joint protocols, reliable service availability, good handovers and feedback across agencies matter. Evaluate safety, experience, repeat contact and connection to care-not only arrest or transport.
You’ll be interested if… you commission mental-health response, co-response, right-care pathways, control-room triage or training for crisis encounters.
Operations
Operational powers and tactics that may change where activity takes place.
Weapon-ban zones: the boundary matters
Setting: Germany 🇩🇪
Who did it? Reinhold Melcher, Peer Keßler, Alexandra Heyden, Florian Dittrich and Christoph Meißelbach.
What was the study about? The study examined a weapon-ban zone introduced in Leipzig, Germany, in November 2018. It used geocoded police-recorded crime for 24 months before and 24 months after, ending in October 2020, and examined both the zone and surrounding areas using time-series and spatial techniques.
What did it find? Violent and property crime fell in the short term inside the zone, with the clearest reduction in theft. The longer-term picture was much less convincing. Crime also appeared to move: the geography and persistence of displacement differed between property and violent offending, with property offending showing the clearer spatial adaptation.
How confident can we be? The detailed location data and multiple analyses improve the picture, but this remains an observational before-and-after study. There was no randomised or matched comparison area, no direct measure of police activity, and the period ended during the pandemic. Changes in reporting, enforcement or wider conditions could explain some of the movement. The authors are appropriately cautious: the study cannot prove that the zone caused the changes.
What does it mean in practice? A zone should be evaluated outside as well as inside its boundary, over more than its launch period and separately by offence type. If the map stops at the line, displacement can look rather like success.
You’ll be interested if… you use exclusion or weapon-control zones, place-based powers, city-centre patrols or hotspot tactics where displacement is a concern.
Performance Management
Demand, deployment and the context needed to interpret performance fairly.
What predicts police demand? A map of the UK evidence
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? The Home Office rapid evidence review team. The report acknowledges Ruby Forshaw, Jo Perkins and Abbie Harrison, with external review by Kate Bowers and Tom Kirchmaier.
What was the study about? The review searched Google Scholar for UK studies and included 62, mostly published between 2011 and 2021. It coded 1,114 reported links between 49 possible predictors and 27 types of police demand. The search was completed in December 2021, so this is a structured look backwards rather than a live forecast.
What did it find? Deprivation, education and income inequality were repeatedly associated with burglary, robbery and theft; unemployment was linked with violence. Population growth, churn and density were generally associated with more crime, while traffic measures were linked with road collisions. Major political or terrorist events were associated with hate crime, and some sporting events with criminal damage, theft and violence. Lockdowns shifted demand rather than simply removing it: burglary and robbery fell, while cybercrime and domestic abuse rose in parts of the evidence.
How confident can we be? This is a useful map of a broad and scattered literature, not a test showing that any one factor causes demand. The evidence is uneven across topics, often uses different definitions and is now several years old. Missing people, domestic abuse, mental health and road traffic demand were among the thinner areas. A rapid review using one search platform is also less exhaustive than a full systematic review.
What does it mean in practice? Demand planning works best when national patterns are treated as prompts for local testing. Forces can combine demographic, economic, event and mobility information with their own calls, crimes and harm measures, and keep checking whether relationships still hold as conditions change.
You’ll be interested if… you plan resources, forecast demand, run a force management statement, commission analytical work or are trying to understand why demand has changed.
Mobility and crime: footfall can sharpen the demand picture
Setting: England and Wales 🇬🇧
Who did it? Hulya Seyidoglu, Jose Pina-Sánchez, Nick Malleson and Graham Farrell.
What was the study about? The researchers linked monthly police-recorded crime with Google Community Mobility data for 328 local authorities in England and Wales from March 2020 to October 2022. The models compared changes within each area over time rather than simply comparing one place with another.
What did it find? More time around home was associated with lower property crime, violence and public-order crime. More activity around retail, grocery, transport and workplaces was generally associated with higher crime. The size and shape of the relationship varied by offence and local authority.
How confident can we be? The national coverage and repeated observations are useful, and the modelling controls for stable differences between areas. It still shows association, not cause. The pandemic was an unusual period, Google data represent opted-in location users rather than everyone, and monthly averages can hide short-lived or very local patterns. Other changing conditions may account for part of the relationship.
What does it mean in practice? Mobility measures can complement calls, crimes, events and local intelligence when forecasting demand. They are best used as a local signal rather than as a national conversion formula: ten points of extra footfall will not mean the same thing everywhere.
You’ll be interested if… you forecast demand around transport, retail, nightlife, major disruption or changing patterns of work and travel.
The end of a shift changes activity and selectivity
Setting: United States 🇺🇸
Who did it? Marc Olson and Ian T. Adams.
What was the study about? The study used five years of traffic citation data from Phoenix Police Department: 291,352 citation stops made by 2,924 officers. The researchers inferred ten-hour shifts and compared the same officer at the same time and location when that hour fell at a different point in their shift.
What did it find? Citation activity was about 25% lower near the end of a shift than earlier. Officers made fewer citation stops, but recorded more violations per stop, which is more consistent with increased selectivity than with making extra stops to generate overtime. Proactive activity was highest around the middle of the shift.
How confident can we be? The large dataset and within-officer comparisons reduce many obvious alternative explanations. Shifts had to be inferred rather than read from rosters, the data contain citation-producing stops rather than all potential encounters, and the study concerns one agency and one shift pattern. Some findings about selectivity became less stable under the strictest comparisons.
What does it mean in practice? When leaders interpret activity, shift position belongs in the conversation. Briefings, overlap, handovers, report-writing and recovery can be designed around predictable changes in proactivity. End-of-shift decline should not be treated as evidence of motive without looking at workload and opportunity.
You’ll be interested if… you design shifts, supervise proactive policing, interpret officer activity or study fatigue and discretion.
Prevention
Reducing exposure and helping people act before harm or victimisation occurs.
Money muling: exposure is wider than understanding
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? Amy Scoffham and Jessica Kelly, Home Office, using surveys delivered by Ipsos UK.
What was the study about? Two online surveys asked people aged 16–75 about approaches to move money for someone else, their understanding of the law and whether payment would change their willingness. A random-probability panel—where people are selected through a random process with a known chance of selection, rather than simply volunteering—surveyed 2,114 people in Great Britain from 15–21 February 2024. A separate quota sample surveyed 2,233 people across the UK from 22–28 March 2024; this second group was recruited online and balanced to match selected population characteristics, but was not randomly selected.
What did it find? Fourteen per cent had seen a general opportunity to become a money mule and 6% had been approached directly. Exposure was higher among younger adults: a quarter of 16–24-year-olds had seen an opportunity advertised. Email featured most in direct approaches, while social media featured most in general advertising. Almost everyone said they would refuse, even as the payment rose, but only 18% correctly recognised all three illegal scenarios presented to them. People who had encountered recruitment were more likely to misclassify at least one scenario.
How confident can we be? The random-probability survey gives a useful national baseline because selection does not depend only on who chooses to take part, and the second survey points in much the same direction. These are self-reports, however, and the payment questions are hypothetical. Seeing an approach is not the same as accepting one, and the quota survey does not represent people who are digitally excluded.
What does it mean in practice? Prevention messages may need to do more than say ‘money muling is illegal’. They can show the less obvious arrangements that count, the approaches people actually receive and the consequences of allowing an account to be used. Younger adults and the channels on which recruitment occurs are obvious priorities, but the survey also shows this is not solely a youth issue.
You’ll be interested if… you work on fraud, economic crime, safeguarding, schools and universities, communications, social-media intelligence or victim prevention.
Cybersecurity training: short video beat written advice on intentions
Setting: United States🇺🇸
Source: Video-based cybersecurity training and protection motivation: evidence from a randomized experiment
Who did it? George W. Burruss, Courtney L. Weber and Taylor Fisher.
What was the study about? The researchers randomly assigned 437 adults in the United States to watch a narrative video, watch a direct instructional video or read a text warning about phishing. The online study ran from 10 July to 1 August 2024 and measured intended cyber-hygiene behaviour before and immediately after the material.
What did it find? Both videos increased protective intentions more than the written message. There was no meaningful difference between the story-led and instructional videos. Believing that the recommended actions would work, feeling vulnerable, seeing the threat as serious and perceiving fewer practical barriers were linked with stronger intentions. Technical skill and reflective thinking also mattered.
How confident can we be? Random assignment supports a causal claim about the immediate change in self-reported intentions in this study. It does not show that participants later behaved differently, retained the message or resisted a real phishing attempt. The text condition was also an intervention, and the analysis of possible psychological mechanisms was correlational rather than causal.
What does it mean in practice? Short, clear video may be a useful step up from written advice. The content should emphasise actions that work and make them easy to complete. Before investing heavily in drama versus direct instruction, test both against behaviour-such as a safe simulated phishing exercise-and check whether any gain lasts.
You’ll be interested if… you deliver cybercrime prevention, staff security training, public communications or behaviour-change campaigns.
Workforce
Recruitment, learning, wellbeing and public expectations of leadership.
Hybrid recruit learning: attrition had more than one address
Setting: Australia 🇦🇺
Who did it? Amanda Davies and Antony Stephenson.
What was the study about? The study followed one full-time and one part-time 2025 cohort on the New South Wales Police Force Associate Degree in Policing Practice. More than 80% of the first phase was online. Surveys and interviews explored accessibility, learning and attrition among active and disengaged recruits.
What did it find? Active recruits generally felt able to use the technology and study online. The small number of disengaged responses did not suggest that online delivery was the main or sole reason for leaving; family, finance and wider life pressures appeared more important. Part-time recruits often seemed particularly prepared for the format.
How confident can we be? This is an early, useful temperature check rather than a firm evaluation. Only two disengaged full-time recruits and three disengaged part-time recruits completed a survey, none took part in interviews, and active recruits self-selected into the research. It covers one academy and two cohorts, so it cannot establish whether delivery mode affects attrition. The work forms part of a longer five-year study.
What does it mean in practice? Do not diagnose online learning as the attrition problem without following the people who leave. Track reasons for withdrawal consistently and build support around finance, family demands, workload, digital access and academic confidence. Compare outcomes as well as satisfaction over time.
You’ll be interested if… you design recruit education, blended learning, workforce entry routes, retention support or evaluation of the police education model.
Family liaison officers: protection is more than personal resilience
Setting: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Who did it? Jason Roach, Ashley Cartwright and Liam Scott Curran.
What was the study about? An online survey of 394 family liaison officers in England and Wales ran from February to May 2024. It used established scales to measure secondary traumatic stress, wellbeing, resilience and the degree to which people felt able to influence events in their lives.
What did it find? Average secondary traumatic stress was in the mild range, but experience varied sharply: 15% scored in the severe range and a further 7% in the high range. Personal distress during the previous year was the strongest predictor of poorer wellbeing and greater secondary trauma. Higher resilience and a stronger internal sense of control were associated with better outcomes.
How confident can we be? The study has a substantial specialist sample and uses recognised measures. It is cross-sectional, however: a snapshot taken at one point rather than a study following change over time. It therefore cannot show that resilience or a sense of control causes better wellbeing, or that resilience training would solve the problem. People under greatest strain may have been more or less likely to respond.
What does it mean in practice? Offer confidential, whole-person support and regular supervision; monitor exposure, workload and recovery; and give officers meaningful voice and control where the role allows. Individual coping skills may help, but the findings do not justify placing responsibility for occupational harm on the officer alone.
You’ll be interested if… you support FLOs or other trauma-exposed roles, commission wellbeing provision, supervise specialist teams or assess occupational health risk.
What signals a good chief to the public? Credentials count-but need translation
Setting: United States 🇺🇸
Who did it? Gordon Abner and Emily Mee.
What was the study about? In April 2026, 303 adults in the United States completed a randomised choice exercise. They repeatedly chose between fictional police-chief candidates whose evidence-based policing experience, professional standards, experience, current role and population served were varied. A follow-up invited open comments on how people made sense of the credentials.
What did it find? Professional standards and evidence-based policing were the two most influential attributes in the choices, closely followed by experience serving a relevant population. External credentials-such as accreditation or an evidence-based policing award-were preferred to descriptions of implementation experience. Comments suggest credentials acted as shortcuts for verification and prestige, although some people questioned their politics or distance from day-to-day practice.
How confident can we be? Randomised profiles allow a sound comparison of preferences within the task. They do not show whom people would support in a real appointment, whether a credentialed chief performs better or whether trust changes after appointment. Results depend on the explanations and five attributes supplied, and the US online sample limits direct transfer to UK policing.
What does it mean in practice? Independent standards and evidence credentials may reassure the public, but labels should be accompanied by concrete examples: what changed, how it was tested and who benefited. Appointment panels should also avoid treating a credential as a substitute for the competence it is meant to signal.
You’ll be interested if… you recruit or develop chief officers, communicate professional standards, lead accreditation or explain evidence-based policing to the public.
And that’s July 2026!
