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INTERACT is an ESRC funded, wide-ranging study of the use of technology in interactions between the police and public. The end of project conference for the INTERACT project will showcase key findings related to shifts towards technologically-mediated police-public contact. We consider how police organisations can pursue procedurally just experiences and build legitimacy with various publics whilst changing the nature and form of police contact.
The event includes a mix of plenary sessions, including an opening keynote from Professor Tom Tyler, presentations from the INTERACT team and colleagues working on related research internationally, and an interactive World Café session exploring the implications of this work. Breakout parallel presentation sessions will cover: Digital crime reporting; Body Worn Video; Public perspectives on technology; and Technology, visibility and legitimacy.
We welcome attendance from academics, policy makers, police practitioners, members of the public and other interested parties. The event will be signed in BSL and key discussions will be captured live by a graphic artist.
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Welcome Professor Andrea Nolan CBE, Principal & Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University
Objectives and Plans for the Day Professor Liz Aston
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Does justice need a human presence?
Government agencies ranging from the police to the courts and administrative agencies have been moving rapidly to incorporate various forms of impersonal justice into their dealings with the public. These new forms frequently include remote hearings, written communications, automated/algorithmic decision-making and accountability and most recently the use of Chatbots in place of humans as agents of authority. What is often lacking in decisions about whether to move in these new directions is a discussion about what government processes ought to achieve. One important goal is to maintain the popular legitimacy of the state and its authorities both among those who personally deal with authorities and within the public more generally. Taking this perspective, I suggest that changes (reforms?) are often justified on utilitarian grounds, but ought to be filtered through public views about procedural justice since it is such justice-based judgements that shape popular legitimacy. A legitimacy focus is especially relevant today since there is widespread evidence of declines in public trust in government. Efforts to be responsive to the public often underlie efforts at change so procedural changes should be evaluated by considering whether they are consistent with community conceptions of fairness.
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Investigating New Types of Engagement, Response and Contact Technologies in Policing
INTERACT is a mixed methods study of the use of technology in interactions between the police and public. It considers recent shifts towards technologically-mediated contact (Wells et al., 2023), to explore whether, and how, police organisations can pursue their aims of providing a procedurally just experience for users, and build legitimacy with various publics, whilst fundamentally changing the nature and form of police contact. This presentation will provide an overview of the project and its methods. We adopted a case study approach and conducted interviews with senior police, observations with communications and contact teams and observations with local frontline police of in-person interactions with the public. We also conducted online experiments, focus groups and interviews with the public and various communities of interest. In this presentation we will highlight some of the key findings from the project relating to underpinning evidence, drivers including efficiency and effectiveness, procedural justice and legitimacy, visibility and accessibility and the needs and expectations of various publics. Finally, we explore the implications for policing research, policy and practice in the UK and beyond.
Chair: Professor Ben Bradford, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Room - 2.D.14
Session Chair: Dr Alistair Henry, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh
Imagining the 'end user': Strategy, assumptions and the digital architecture of contact - Dr Helen Wells
Police organisations in England and Wales, as in many other contexts, are increasingly shifting crime reporting and other public-facing contact online. In this presentation we explore the beliefs, motivations, and objectives of those tasked with ‘delivering’ the ‘vision’ of digital police contact at the strategic national level. We explore the set of 'frames' and expectations an actor brings to a situation or process to understand how participants enacted this 'channel shift’ (Wells et al., 2023), the ends they were seeking to meet, and how different interests came to be designed-in to the contact architecture. We suggest that the primary frame centred around notions of efficiency and demand management. Running alongside this is a secondary frame of customer service, where it is assumed that the public also wish for the efficient delivery of this technologically mediated service. This, we suggest, is likely to be only a partial reflection of what people want when contacting police; but the framing of 'contact’ as a separate deliverable by those delivering this agenda serves to occlude or evade this point. Technology, we argue, imprints itself on the context by appearing to offer a convenient solution to problems of public wants and police needs.
Reporting crimes on line: An evaluation of the Merseyside Police reporting portal - Professor Ben Bradford
In this paper we report on findings of an evaluation of user experiences when using an online crime reporting portal (“the portal”) designed by Salesforce for Merseyside Police. The customer experience assessment is embedded within a broader experimental design that allowed us to estimate the causal effect of a range of factors on the experiences of using the portal, including trust in police, motivation to report crime, the type of crime involved, and the quality of follow-up communication. Taking a ‘mystery shopper’ approach, a total of 638 participants were recruited to take part. All were asked to report one of two fictional crimes (criminal damage or ASB) via the portal, then queried about their experience and attitudes towards reporting crime online in the future. Overall satisfaction with the portal was high, as were intentions to use this way of reporting crime in the. The type of crime involved made little difference, but we found that when participants were primed to have higher levels of trust in the police, they tended to view the portal and the overall crime report process more favourably, compared to those primed to have lower levels of trust in the police. Finally, those who received a follow-up letter that was low in procedural justice were less satisfied with the process, compared to people who received a follow-up letter that was high in procedural justice. Among other things, our findings speak to the idea that online crime reporting is not a ‘one off’ event, but is embedded in people’s wider experiences of policing.
Exploring the impact of reporting medium on online crime reporting experiences: comparing live chat with human and AI operators - Dr Arabella Kyprianides
Recent advancements and the push for efficiency have led UK police forces to adopt technology-driven approaches for public interaction and criminal justice coordination, emphasising "transformation" agendas and a "channel shift" strategy. This involves a pivot towards digital platforms for tasks like crime reporting through online forms or chat functions. Two studies investigate public preferences and perceptions regarding online crime reporting, focusing on the impact of using human operators versus chatbots, the nature of the crime, and the response provided. The first study experimentally examines the effects of operator type (human or chatbot), crime seriousness (graffiti or burglary), and response type (active police attendance vs. passive crime recording) on user experiences in online crime reporting. Key findings include a preference for human operators over chatbots, noted for their fairness and clearer explanations; the importance of procedural justice in both conditions; and how crime type influences perceptions of outcomes, decision-making clarity, and overall satisfaction, with proactive responses being more critical for serious crimes. The second study extends the first by exploring the importance of politeness and respect in online interactions, particularly the differences between human and chatbot-mediated communications in online crime reporting. These studies highlight the significance of procedural justice and communication clarity in digital crime reporting platforms, underscoring the challenges in balancing user satisfaction across various reporting scenarios.
Room - 3.D.14
Session Chair: Professor Sarah Soppitt, Northumbria University
Body-Worn Video as an actant: How police-citizen encounters are shaped by cameras - Professor Megan O'Neill
Recently, UK police forces have introduced various technologies that alter the methods by which they interact with the public in face-to-face encounters. This includes devices such as body-worn video (BWV), mobile data terminals (MDT) and smart phones. Using data from in-depth ethnographic observations of response, community and traffic policing units in three UK police forces, as well as focus groups with the public, we will demonstrate how digital technologies are perceived and navigated during these in-person encounters. Through employing an Actor Network Theory framework to these data, we will demonstrate that police officers will give agency to technology, such as by using it as a tool of coercion and power (‘The technology is telling me you are wanted’) and being directed by technology (sometimes in error) to stop people or vehicles (‘The system says you don’t have a license’). Further, officers have identified that BWV gives them a sense of safety when encountering ‘problem’ members of the public and can alter the behaviour of that public, even when it is not activated. Members of the public will also engage with technology in an encounter (such as by using their own camera phones), to redress the balance of power to a degree. We will consider technology as an actor in its own right in these interactions, and the extent to which it sets the rules for other actors in the encounter.
Understanding the use of procedural justice in stop and search in the era of Body-Worn Videos - Dr Sharda Murria
This presentation will examine how officers balance legality and legitimacy considerations in stop and search. It draws up the social systematic observations of stop and search via BWVs, direct observations of stop and search scrutiny panels, and interviews with officers and scrutiny panel members in a large metropolitan city in England. It adopts a mixed-methods approach to understanding officer adherence to procedural justice in practice and 'good practice, barriers to procedurally just conduct and the role of BWVs in these interactions.
Implementing body-worn video technology: Practical considerations for public police organisations - Jean-Pierre Roux
This presentation discusses core findings of a doctoral study which examined the ways in which public police (in England) and body-worn video (BWV) technology shape one another. By paying sufficient attention to the technical elements of BWV technology such as the device lens, recording functionality, mobile connectivity, footage management software, and the interoperability of ancillary systems, novel findings emerge around usage practices and the implications of technological advancement. This study was able to identify ways in which BWV technology adoption, expansion, and technical development shaped a policing organisation on an institutional, departmental, and individual (behavioural) level. It is also identified the ways in which policing, within a specific regional context, shaped the way BWV technology is selected, used, and subsequently re-designed. The select findings are presented as fundamental considerations when implementing BWV technology. Given that the presentation is framed pragmatically, the lessons do serve to temper any expectations that technology can ‘solve’ the challenges which public police have historically struggled to adequately address. Nonetheless, it does highlight potential scope for deriving benefits if the capabilities (and limitations) of the technology are properly understood and effective policies and accountability/transparency mechanisms surrounding their usage are established and maintained.
Body-Worn Video in British policing: technological solutions and teething problems - Dr Diana Miranda
Body-Worn Video (BWV) is usually depicted as a technological solution to enhance transparent and accountable interactions between police and citizens. In this talk, Dr Diana Miranda will explore the impacts and consequences of this technologically mediated interaction. This will be informed by empirical work conducted in the UK during the last 6 years, namely interviews with BWV experts and policing practitioners. Dr Diana Miranda will discuss specific techno-social challenges faced during the implementation of BWV in various British police forces (contextually, technically, and ethically) and highlight different deployment practices and experiences of use. Lastly, she will briefly reflect on the emergence of differentiated governance and scrutiny mechanisms and the importance of considering future challenges arising from the integration of BWV with other technologies and surveillance tools (such as facial recognition).
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Room - 2.D.08
Session Chair: Lorraine Gillies, Chief Executive Officer, Scottish Community Safety Network
Public perceptions and expectations of technologically-mediated police-public contact - Professor Liz Aston
Members of the public are increasingly likely to encounter policing in ways that are technologically-mediated e.g. via online crime reporting or involving Body-Worn Video in in-person interactions. In the INTERACT project we seek to understand both police and public perceptions and experiences of technologically-mediated contact, assess its potential impact on police legitimacy for various publics and consider what visible and accessible policing means in a digital age. This presentation draws on data from focus groups we have recently conducted with members of the public in our four UK geographic case study areas, covering both urban and rural areas. We present emerging findings regarding public expectations of and responses to technologically-mediated police-public contact. We explore how the public feel about the different ways the police can be seen and contacted and analyse shared and divergent views amongst various publics regarding perceptions of technologically mediated contact. We also consider what improvements could be made to police use of technologies to enhance trust and confidence.
Access Granted and Access Denied: Accessibility and Police Digital Provisions. - Dr Estelle Clayton
This presentation will draw on findings from both the police and public focused phases of the INTERACT project to explore what accessibility looks like in the new domain of digitally-mediated police contact. First, taking findings from interviews with the police across the partner forces, Dr Estelle Clayton will explore how and in what ways accessibility has been designed in to (or out of) digital decision-making in policing. Then, drawing on findings from 1) interviews with autistic individuals and 2) focus groups with the public, Dr Estelle Clayton will explore how accessibility is experienced in new forms of digitally-mediated contact, which will challenge assumptions that technology is a silver bullet that can remedy and overcome pre-existing accessibility concerns. Together, this presentation will highlight that accessibility is a cornerstone of police-public contact, which, when present, can enable the procedurally just tenets of impartiality and fairness, and without which can prevent these from occurring. Dr Clayton will end the presentation by making recommendations for how accessibility can be built into digital-decision making and digital provision in policing.
The trust needs to come first: BSL Users' experiences of digitally mediated police contact. - Dr Robert Skinner
This presentation will draw on findings from the public-focused stream of the INTERACT project. New digital developments in policing, such as ‘contact us’ web-based email exchanges, online resources, live-chat and chat-bots, and digital interpretation services, are often linked with a broader accessibility agenda within policing; to create multiple avenues of contact to enable publics to have ‘channel choice’ in their decisions on the medium of interaction with the police (Wells et al., 2022). However, it is not clear how experiences of procedural justice may be influenced by the imposition of technology within police-public encounters, nor to what extent public views have been incorporated into these digital developments. This is particularly the case for D/deaf individuals, who are required to rely on technology when making contact with the police. This presentation explores how D/deaf communities experience digitally mediated police interactions across dimensions of trust, voice, and accessibility. Presenting findings from focus groups and interviews with D/deaf individuals, this presentation will explore how BSL-using D/deaf individuals experience technologically mediated police interactions.
Room - 3.D.08
Session Chair: Dr Catriona Stewart OBE, Scottish Police Authority
Drones: Technology,(In)Visibility & Futures of Aerial Policing - Dr Will Andrews
Over the previous decade and a half, UK police forces have increasingly operationalised unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, to aid officers in a wide number of tasks. These drones are used alongside police helicopters and other aerial resources but offer unique opportunities and challenges. In this presentation Dr Will Andrews draws on ethnographic and interview data gathered across three UK police forces, regarding their use of drones in policing and future aims, as well as their policing of counter-drones. This paper will open with the current uses of police drones, before discussing ongoing and near-future developments in drone technology, including Beyond Line of Sight (BVLoS) flight, the trialling of Drones as First Responders (DFR) and testing of payload-carrying drones. Turning towards Procedural Justice Theory and the need therein for visibility and transparency in procedurally just encounters between police and public, Dr Andrews draws attention to the relative (in)visibility of drones operating at height. This frames a critical discussion of definitions of covert and overt surveillance and understandings of where drone deployment fits within these, in practice. Dr Andrews concludes by making recommendations regarding the visibility and public perceptions of drones as used in UK policing.
At Variable Speed: Digital Transformation of Policing in Belgium - Dr Sarah Van Praet
The Digipol project, a collaboration between VUB, ULB, and NICC, analyses the digital transformation of the Belgian local police services. In our part of the project we use Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to explore how digitalization impacts everyday policing through Body-Worn Cameras (BWC), Crime Analysis Software (CAS), and Multi-Tenant Platforms (MTP) equipped on tablets and phones. ANT allows us to understand the complex interplay between human and non-human actors, including police officers, technology developers, and the technologies themselves. Our research reveals that technology adoption often precedes the establishment of a legal framework, typically in response to crises. We examine the role of various actors, including private companies, academics, and frontline police officers. Empirical research is in progress but an initial analysis contributes already in beginning to understand how technology is incorporated into police organizations, their strategies, and work processes, particularly in Belgium’s decentralized police force structure. This research will produce valuable insights into the transformation of policing in the digital age.
Exploring the dynamic relationship between community policing and technology in a digitally mediated world: reflections from Belgium - Jasper De Paepe
The landscape of police-citizen interactions is evolving, marked by a transition from traditional face-to-face exchanges to technologically mediated engagements. In this presentation, I delve into the intricate interplay between community policing and technology. This relationship is particularly interesting because there is an apparent contrast between both components. Community policing emphasises personal engagement and human connections(See e.g. Cordner, 1997, 2014; Reisig, 2010). Conversely, technology, as noted by Terpstra and Salet (2022), seems to diminish the human dimension in policing, portraying a trend toward 'dehumanization' within the realm of the 'abstract police.' This dehumanization is manifested in the sidelining of social interactions, often supplanted by artificial (digital) systems and procedures, limiting the scope for personalized police services.
Based on ethnographic field work on neighbourhood policing in Belgium, I delve into how neighbourhood officers are navigating digitally mediated interactions. Despite reservations, officers recognize potential of technological means to enhance accessibility and responsiveness. However, disparities exist in officers' approaches, reflecting different operational styles and preferences. In my presentation, I will discuss the lessons learned of my study on neighborhood policing in a digitally mediated world and outline avenues for future research building upon these findings.
Digitalizing the police: the use of digital devices within police organizations and the impact of them on police legitimacy and police-public relations - Lies Vande Meulebroucke
My research contributes to the DIGIPOL project, which is funded by the Belgian Science Policy. It investigates the digitalization process—focusing on technologies such as body-worn cameras (BWCs), multi-tenant platforms (MTPs), and analysis software—and examines how the employment of these technological tools affects the day-to-day operations of the Belgian local police. The primary goal of this research is to assess the potential impacts of technology use in daily frontline policing on police-public relations and police legitimacy. Through comprehensive observation of various local police activities, with a particular emphasis on frontline operations, and through interviews with street-level police officers, we aim to understand the application and justification of technology during police work. Furthermore, we examine its influence on interactions with the public. This presentation will provide some first insights into the application of technology in frontline policing by the Belgian local police and highlight some initial findings.
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
World Café style interactive workshop with attendees (academics, policy makers, policing practitioners and members of the public) considering the implications of the INTERACT project findings and exploring our recommendations. How can the research findings be best used to improve policing policy and practice and the experience of the public?
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Closing Reflections: Rosamunde Van Brakel, Inspector Dan Popple and Chief Superintendent Phil Davison
Room - LRC 5 Horizon Suite
Professor Liz Aston
Plenary Speaker
Liz Aston is a Professor of Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University and has been the Director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR) since 2018. Her expertise centres on local policing and her current research focuses on technology in policing, and the intersect between policing and drugs. Liz is the Principal Investigator for the INTERACT project, she chaired the Independent Advisory Group on Emerging Technologies in Policing and is the co-editor of Palgrave’s Critical Policing Studies series.
Professor Tom Tyler
Keynote Speaker
Tom Tyler is the Macklin Fleming Emeritus Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is a social psychologist who studies the dynamics of authority in groups, organizations and societies. His books include Why People Obey the Law (2006), Why People Cooperate (2011) and Legitimacy-based Policing and the Promotion of Community Vitality (2022). He received the Kalven prize for paradigm shifting scholarship in the study of law and society in 2000; the lifetime achievement award from the International Society for Justice Research in 2012; the lifetime achievement award from the International Compliance Network in 2022 and the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2024.
Dr Helen Wells
Speaker
Dr Helen Wells is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Keele University and Director of the Roads Policing Academic Network. Her research focuses primarily on the impact of technology in policing contexts, including its effects on legitimacy and culture, its unintended consequences, and its contribution to the (re)conceptualisation of 'crime' itself.
Professor Ben Bradford
Speaker
Ben Bradford is Professor of Global City Policing and Director of the Centre of Global City Policing in the Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London. His research focuses primarily on issues of procedural justice, trust, legitimacy, cooperation and compliance, as well as various aspects of operational police practice.
Dr Arabella Kyprianides
Speaker
Dr Arabella Kyprianides is a Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Security and Crime Science, involved in the UCL Centre for Global City Policing and the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration. Her work includes ESRC and Nuffield-funded research and consultancy in intervention evaluation, policing, crime, and recidivism. She focuses on public trust, police legitimacy, and compliance in policing marginalised communities, and the social determinants of well-being among vulnerable groups.
Professor Megan O'Neill
Speaker
Professor Megan O’Neill is a Reader in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Dundee and an Associate Director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR). Her work focuses on aspects of police culture, stop and search, community policing, public sector pluralisation in policing and surveillance practices of the state. Dr O’Neill’s work is largely qualitative, with a particular focus on ethnography.
Dr Sharda Murria
Speaker
Sharda is a Senior Lecturer in Policing & Criminology, and Course Leader for Policing at Birmingham City University. She is a socio-legal scholar and undertook her Ph.D. at the University of Warwick researching the concept of a 'good' stop and search in the era of Body-Worn Videos. She has a keen interest in stop and search, stop and search scrutiny panels and police accountability.
Jean-Pierre Roux
Speaker
Jean-Pierre is a Southern criminologist currently completing a joint-PhD at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The doctoral research examines various ways in which public police and body-worn video technology shape one another other. He has worked in academia as a senior researcher on topics such as community safety and private security, in the private sector as a security risk analyst, and in animal protection as a wildlife crime investigator.
Dr Diana Miranda
Speaker
Diana’s research aligns criminological and sociological approaches to explore the use of emerging biometric and data driven technologies in Justice settings. From visual surveillance technologies (such as body-worn video and facial recognition) to identification and classification technologies more generally, (e.g photographic, lofoscopic, genetic but also soft biometrics and emotion recognition AI tools), her projects explore the use of these tech devices in criminal investigation, predictive policing, smart cities, security of borders and prisons.
Dr Estelle Clayton
Speaker
Dr Estelle Clayton is a Lecturer in Criminology and a Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University. Her work focusses on police policy and practice, stop and search, community policing, and police use of technology in both national and comparative contexts. Beyond this, Dr Clayton also explores how neurodiverse individuals experience policing and criminal justice systems more broadly. Dr Clayton is a skilled ethnographer, having conducted two large scale ethnographies in Scotland, and also has expertise in interviews and focus groups.
Dr Robert Skinner
Speaker
Dr Robert Skinner is a lecturer and research assistant based in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies (LINCS) at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. In 2014 Robert joined the LINCs team working on the Insign project, Justisigns, Translating the Deaf Self and the SLTI UK census. In 2020 Robert completed his PhD at Heriot-Watt University investigating at video-mediated interpreting in frontline policing contexts (For more information visit www.proximityinterpreting.com). Since 2020, Robert has published a number of studies investigating deaf people’s experience of the police, the suitability of interpreting services in policing contexts, and ways of using video conferencing technologies to increase high quality access to interpreting services.
Dr Will Andrews
Speaker
Dr Will Andrews is a Research Fellow at Keele University. His research, as part of the INTERACT project, has investigated the role of technology in affecting police-public interactions, focussing in particular on drones, drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected with two English police forces between 2022-23. Will's previous research has explored the modified car community in the UK, exploring the the socio-technical framing of the car and driving, within particular groups.
Dr Sarah Van Praet
Speaker
Dr. Sarah Van Praet is a senior researcher at the Criminology Department of the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC). Her current focus lies within the DIGIPOL research project, which investigates the impact of digitalization through technologies such as body-worn cameras, mobile data terminals, and multi-tenant platforms on work relations within the Belgian local police and their interactions with the public. Funded by BRAIN-be (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks) under BELSPO (Belgian Science Policy), this collaborative project brings together researchers from NICC, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In addition to her work at NICC, Dr. Van Praet serves as a lecturer at ULB and HeLHA. She is also a scientific collaborator at the Centre d’Histoire du Droit et d’Anthropologie juridique within the Université libre de Bruxelles.
Jasper De Paepe
Speaker
Jasper De Paepe is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University and the Department of Public Governance & Management, Ghent University. In the past, Jasper De Paepe has conducted research on local security networks, police lethal force and the interaction between experts and policy makers, as well as the acquisition of expert advice in the formulation of policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in the EU and Indo-Pacific regions. His PhD research focusses on the interplay between community policing and technology. His research adopts an empirical qualitative approach, using an ethnographic research methodology in both the Belgian and Dutch police.
Lies Vande Meulebroucke
Speaker
I am a PhD-student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), situated within the Department of Law and Criminology, operating under the supervision of Prof. dr. Lucas Melgaço and Prof. dr. Sofie De Kimpe. I graduated in Criminology in September 2022, and started my PhD in February 2023. The primary goal of my research, as part of the DIGIPOL-project, is to assess the potential impact of the use of technologies in daily frontline policing on police legitimacy and police-public relations. Data is collected by conducting ethnographic research and semi-directive interviews within various Belgian local police forces between 2023-2025.
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