We are delighted to invite you to the SIPR Engagement Event featuring the annual James Smart Memorial Lecture which will be delivered by Dr Alison Heydari, Programme Director for the Police Race Action Plan.
The purpose of the Engagement Event is to provide an opportunity to bring academics, practitioners and policy makers across Scotland together to create opportunities to network, discuss research, and forge future collaborative opportunities. In particular, this event provides an opportunity for people working at our SIPR member Universities and policing organisations to engage with our SIPR thematic Networks and meet the Associate Directors leading the Networks and researchers and practitioners undertaking and pioneering some of the key work related to each theme.
In addition to having stalls for each of the SIPR Networks, Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority, we are providing a “Meet the SIPR Researchers” opportunity.
T/DAC Dr Alison Heydari will deliver the James Smart Memorial Lecture on the subject of “Building police legitimacy – The time is now.”
“Trust, confidence and legitimacy in policing is at an all-time low in some communities following a number of scandals, service failures and some police practices that have caused intergenerational trauma. This is particularly true for some black communities. The positioning of the police service is placed within wider societal inequality where outcomes in the criminal justice system, health and education are not equal for all. This lecture provides insight into a career in policing, outlining the motivation of the most senior black female police chief officer in the UK in becoming the Director of the national Police Race Action Plan to lead the most ambitious Plan in Police history to improve policing for black communities. The lecture will inform the listener of the work carried out so far under the Plan, successes, challenges and the roadmap to continue this work in the collaborative space. The importance of maintaining strong values and ethics, and applying the tenets of Procedural Justice are threads that weave through this lecture and the speaker is keen to invite debate, questions and diverse perspectives on the subject of police legitimacy.”
