By Crest Advisory with RSM UK Consulting

Economic growth is the number one mission of the Government in the UK, seeking to restore stability, increase investment and reform the economy to improve productivity, prosperity, and living standards. This commitment has been made in the context of a sustained period of economic stagnation, throughout which there has been an ongoing conversation as to whether the right levers are being pulled to achieve economic growth. The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) commissioned us to understand the role of policing as a lever - our research seeks to collate existing evidence as well as identify where there are opportunities to develop this evidence in the future. This research also falls within the wider discussion on police funding, police productivity and police reform which is particularly relevant given that the Home Office will be looking to find savings ahead of this year’s spending review as an unprotected government department, ongoing debate about the police funding formula and growing financial pressures on police forces. Science and technology has a significant role to play in police efficiency and effectiveness, but also growth. The NPCC’s Science and Technology Strategy sets a clear ambition for policing “to deliver the most science and technology led police service in the world”. Often, our understanding of policing impact is focused on implementation and public safety outcomes, but economic outcomes have the potential to shift the narrative in terms of how we define an effective and efficient police response. Our work, in partnership with RSM UK Consulting, has sought to understand the evidence between policing and economic outcomes, from which we have produced a logic model to understand these relationships (a logic model conceptualises the links between activities and key outcomes). While we have not been able to estimate the scale of impact of UK policing on economic growth, we hope this logic model can act as a framework for partners to use to further develop the evidence base around the impact of policing on economic outcomes, specifically designing evaluations with these outcomes in mind. In time, this evidence may begin to change how we understand the positive impact of policing on individuals, businesses and communities in England and Wales - with the potential for positive economic outcomes influencing future decisions on funding allocations and commitments to specific policing initiatives and operational interventions. Furthermore, growth could sit alongside efficiency and effectiveness as key metrics for success in policing.

London: Crest Advisory, 2025. 69p.

By Camilla De Camargo, Fred Cram

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic required police officers in England and Wales to enforce new public health restrictions (e.g., stay-at-home directives, social distancing requirements and mask mandates), as well as navigate the risk that COVID-19 posed to their own health and safety during interactions with the public. From a practical standpoint, these factors changed the nature of the policing task significantly, with previously routine police decision-making (e.g., whether or not to carry out stops, searches, arrests and/or detentions) necessarily responding not only to traditional concerns around suspicion and evidence but also directly to these novel legal and organisational challenges. Findings from interviews carried out in 2020 and 2022 with 18 police officers from 11 different forces in England and Wales suggest that well-established predictors of arrest decisions (e.g., offence severity, evidence and/or the pursuit of culturally orientated objectives) were disrupted due to broader considerations, uniquely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article uses Keith Hawkins’ (2002) conceptual framework of criminal justice decision-making—surround, field and frame—as an explanatory device to help us understand arrest and non-arrest decisions of street-level police officers during this period, despite the existence of sufficient evidence to support such action.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice Volume 64, Issue 3 Sep 2025 Pages 277-417

By Stephen Farrall, Jason Warr, Abigail Shaw, Kanupriya Sharma

This paper reviews what is known about ethnic identity and the processes by which people cease offending. Whilst the past 30 years have seen dramatic growth in what is known about desistance, in many jurisdictions, there is a paucity of research which examines this in terms of ethnicity or ethnic variations. We therefore review what is empirically known about ethnicity and desistance. Whilst this review draws from the global literature, our focus is on what this literature tells us about ethnicity and desistance from a British perspective. We find that the majority of these have been undertaken in the United States (although there are some European and Australasian studies). Few studies, however, have fully unpacked the role of racism (in terms of institutional processes or overt prejudice and hostility) and that there have been very few studies of the roles played by ethnicity in processes of desistance.

The Howard Journal of Crime and JusticeVolume 64, Issue 3Sep 2025