Half-Light is Better Than Total Darkness: The Case for Research in Specialist Policing Domains

A recurring theme in my conversations about evidence-based policing (EBP) is how comfortably it sits within certain parts of policing — and how absent it feels in others. We’ve come to expect evaluation in fields like neighbourhood policing, domestic abuse response or stop-and-search. But what about the areas of policing that operate more quietly, behind the scenes — the ones that rarely feature in research journals or conference case-studies?

Financial investigation is one of those areas.

I recently travelled up to Newcastle to spend some time with financial investigators from across the North East and Yorkshire — a reminder for me that this is a highly professional, specialist branch of policing with decades of practice behind it. These are the officers who trace illicit cash-flows, map networks of shell companies, and use the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) to take the profit out of organised crime. Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) are, at their core, motivated by money. Financial investigators give us one of the most direct routes to attack that motivation — to disincentivise participation in organised crime, not through the threat of incarceration, but by removing the reward.

It’s a powerful idea. The challenge is that we don’t actually know how much difference it makes in practice.

This piece is about that gap — and what we can do, realistically, to close it. It’s both a reflection and a call to action: for the Home Office, for academia, and for practitioners to collaborate in finding out what really works when we target the money, not just the people.

The missing leg of the stool

Evidence-based policing rests on three legs:

• Professional judgement,

• Public and political priorities, and

• The best available research

In financial investigation, the first two are solid. Investigators are among the most analytically minded professionals in policing, and the public and political appetite to “make crime not pay” is unwavering. But the third leg — robust research — is conspicuously short.

The College of Policing’s Evidence Gap Map confirms how sparse the evidence is in this field.  One of the few serious attempts to study it — the Home Office’s 2012 report, “The Contribution of Financial Investigation to Tackling Organised Crime” — found that financial investigation regularly added value: identifying assets, mapping networks, strengthening prosecutions but was rarely used to identify organised crime in the first place. It was also silent on the effects on future offending.

Over a decade on, we know the powers are being used — thousands of cash and account forfeiture orders every year, over £700 million recovered in six years. But we still can’t say, with confidence, what difference that makes.

What we know (and what we don’t)

UK reviews have painted a mixed picture. Confiscation orders, imposed after conviction, are the main route for taking the proceeds of crime. But as the National Audit Office noted, criminals still keep “around £99 out of every £100” they make. Enforcement has improved — especially with the creation of regional Asset Confiscation Enforcement (ACE) teams — but total recovery still represents a tiny fraction of the criminal economy.

Non-conviction powers, by contrast, are fast becoming the workhorses of asset recovery. Account Freezing Orders and cash forfeitures now account for almost half of all recovered criminal assets. They are flexible, they can be used early, and they bite hardest where conviction is least likely. But again, the impact — on crime disruption or deterrence — remains largely unmeasured.

A pragmatic path forward

When I spoke with investigators in Newcastle, they described how most of their work is directed by available intelligence or by the quality of initial lines of inquiry — reactive by necessity. When I asked which made the bigger difference, a criminal conviction with a confiscation order or a non-conviction forfeiture, the room fell silent for a moment. Most instinctively said the former, but everyone agreed: no one really knows.

That’s not a failing — it’s an opportunity.

We don’t need to wait for a perfect experiment to start learning. The “purist versus pragmatist” debate in evidence-based practice misses the point. Pragmatism doesn’t mean cutting corners; it means using what’s available to make knowledge cumulative rather than anecdotal. We don’t necessarily need a lot of research funding to make progress. Financial investigation produces mountains of administrative data — values, timelines, crime types, case outcomes, order enforcement rates. With thoughtful design, we can use that to start exploring what works: through before-and-after analysis, matched comparisons, or structured case audits.

It’s about feeling our way in the half-light, rather than standing still in the dark.

Measuring what matters

Finding good outcome measures is one of the hardest tasks in this part of policing. Convicted re-offending tells us little — the cohort is small and biased. OCG disruption panel scores give useful context, but are inherently subjective.

Yet there are data points within reach:

• Repeat association within financial intelligence systems,

• The time it takes a known network to re-form after seizure,

• Trends in asset types or recovery values linked to OCGs,

• The ratio of assets seized to estimated market turnover.

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None of these are perfect. But they are better than nothing — and they’re measurable. Pragmatism in evidence-based policing means acknowledging limitation without surrendering to it.

A call to action

If we want to extend the reach of EBP beyond its traditional boundaries (something SEBP does), we must support specialist policing areas like financial investigation.

We should start by asking a single, deceptively simple question:

Does a non-conviction POCA order — cash, bank balance or crypto-forfeiture — cause more disruption (or equivalent disruption) to crime than a criminal conviction and confiscation order?

That question could reshape strategy, priorities, and funding. It’s also answerable, if we’re willing to get pragmatic and collaborative — to connect researchers, analysts and practitioners, and to make better use of the data we already hold.

The financial investigators I met in Newcastle instinctively know that hitting the money hurts. The task for evidence-based policing is to help them prove it — and in doing so, to expand what “evidence-based” really means for policing as a whole.