̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Lawrence Sherman

Ethnic minorities at much higher risk of homicide in England and Wales

fpjl2 — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 12:10:53 +0000

New research analysing racial disparities among murder victims across most of Britain over the last two decades shows that people of Asian ethnicity are on average twice as likely as White British people to be killed.

For Black people, however, the risk of homicide has been over five and a half times (5.6) higher than for White British people – on average – during the current century, and this disparity has been on the rise since 2015.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology were surprised to find that official UK data did not include relative risk statistics by ethnicity, as is common in countries such as the US and Australia.

They argue that the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) should publish “relevant denominators with raw numerators” to help with public understanding of crime risk and police resourcing. ̽��ֱ��work is published as a research note in the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing.

“Through a series of straightforward calculations, we found substantial racial inequality in the risks of being murdered in England and Wales,” said co-author Professor Lawrence Sherman of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“ ̽��ֱ��pandemic has given the public a crash course in statistics. It provides an opportunity to present all kinds of data in ways that have more meaning for the population as well as those on the front line of prevention,” Sherman said.

Billy Gazard, a crime statistician for the ONS, said: “We have outlined our plans for improving crime statistics for England and Wales in our July 2020 progress update. Within this update we committed to better addressing inequalities in victimisation and highlighting those groups in society that are at most risk of experiencing crime. We plan to carry out further analysis over the coming year, which will include looking at homicide victimisation rates by ethnicity.”

Cambridge criminologists went back over the last 20 years of annual figures using an approach now familiar to many through coronavirus statistics: rates of cases per 100,000 people. This provided a risk ratio for homicide rates by ethnicity in England and Wales.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that, to the best of their knowledge, theirs is the first comparison of ethnic group trends in UK homicide victimisation rates per 100,000 to be published in recent decades, if ever.

They found that homicide risk for White and Asian people has stayed relatively consistent since the turn of the millennium – around one in 100,000 for White people and a little over two in 100,000 for Asian people, consisting primarily of persons of South Asian descent. For Black people, however, risks have fluctuated dramatically over the last 20 years.

̽��ֱ��homicide victimisation rate for Black people was highest in the early noughties: almost 10 in 100,000 in 2001. It dropped by 69% between 2001 and 2012 to a low of 3 in 100,000 around 2013. Rates then began to climb again, rising seven times faster than for White people to reach over 5 in 100,000 last year.

When accounting for age, the disparity is starker still: for those aged 16 to 24, the 21st century average puts young Black people over ten and a half times (10.6) more likely than White people to be victims of homicide in England and Wales.

In fact, researchers point out that – per 100,000 people – the most recent data from 2018-19 puts the murder risk of young Black people 24 times higher than that of young White people.

̽��ֱ��criminologists found no correlation between changes in homicide risk for different ethnicities. As an example, they point to the last three years of data: the homicide rate for White people aged between 16-24 dropped by 57%, while for young Black people it increased by 31%.

“Policing requires reliable evidence, and changing levels of risk are a vital part of preventative policing,” said Sherman. “Our initial findings reveal risk inequalities at a national level, but they may be far greater or lower in local areas. We would encourage police forces to produce their own calculations of murder rates per 100,000.”

Sherman has long advocated for a more 'meaningful' approach to crime data. He has led on the development of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index: a classification system weighted by the impact of an offence on victims, rather than just counting crime numbers.

“Simple statistics show us that the risks of becoming a murder victim are far from equal,” added Sherman. “We need more data analysis of this nature to inform police resource allocation, and promote a more fact-informed dialogue with communities across the country.”

Calculations now familiar from coronavirus coverage – cases per 100,000 people – applied to ethnicity and homicide victimisation in the UK for the first time.

We need more data analysis of this nature to inform police resource allocation, and promote a more fact-informed dialogue with communities across the country

Lawrence Sherman

rudlavibizon

Met Police sign in South London

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Police platform patrols create ‘phantom effect’ that cuts crime in Tube stations

fpjl2 — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:02:29 +0000

A massive experiment that deployed regular police patrols on platforms has shown that four 15-minute patrols a day in some of the capital’s most crime-ridden Underground platforms reduced reported crime by 28% in patrolled locations, while it rose 16% on platforms without patrols.

Researchers from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology worked with the British Transport Police (BTP) to conduct the experiment across six months in 2011-2012. ̽��ֱ��findings have been published in the journal Criminology.

̽��ֱ��team identified the 115 London platforms where reported crime was highest. They randomly allocated 57 of these platforms to four daily 'doses' of patrols – two officers on foot for quarter of an hour – four days a week, and compared the effects to the remaining 'untreated' platforms.

Patrolled platforms dropped from 88 crimes in the preceding six months to 63 crimes on the same platforms during the six months of the experiment. In the same time periods, crimes on platforms without regular patrols increased from 64 to 74.

A total of 3,549 calls to police from the platform came from stations without patrols, compared to 2,817 in the stations receiving a policing 'dosage' – a relative difference of 21%.

Researchers also found that patrols on platforms did not simply 'displace' the crimes. Instead, the overall pattern showed crime going down in all parts of the stations – not just on platforms – relative to 'control' stations.

Strikingly, they discovered that the vast majority of reduction in both crime and calls for assistance occurred when these police patrols were absent – some 97% of the measured effect. ̽��ֱ��criminologists have dubbed this the “London Underground paradox”.

“ ̽��ֱ��total crime prevention benefit of police patrols may be greater when they are absent than when they are present,” said study co-author Prof Lawrence Sherman. “In the London Underground experiment we see a huge residual effect of brief appearances by patrolling officers after they leave”

“This phantom effect suggests that crime declines when potential offenders are apprehensive about a possible police presence based on recent patrolling patterns – even when there are no police in the vicinity,” he said.

“In London stations, it may be that more professional kinds of offenders are particularly sensitive to changes in police presence, such as pickpockets and distraction thieves.”

“ ̽��ֱ��London Underground paradox could have implications for debates on police priorities in an age of austerity, such as the benefits of investigating past crimes compared with the benefits of preventing future crimes,” Sherman said.

London’s Underground opened in 1863, the first underground railway in the world, and provides more than 1.3 billion passenger rides per year.

̽��ֱ��majority of crime in the transport network occurs on the trains and in concourse areas. Crime on platforms constitute 11% of the total, and historically platforms have had no regular police patrols.

As such, platforms offered an opportunity to conduct an experiment on spaces within a major metropolis that had never seen proactive police presence – ideal for gauging patrol effectiveness without previous 'contamination', say researchers.

“Platforms are small, stable and confined places with finite entry and exit points. These characteristics make them optimal for measuring the localised deterrence effects of police patrols,” said first author Dr Barak Ariel.

“We wanted to measure what happens when police patrols are introduced into an urban environment for the first time in over 150 years.”

̽��ֱ��team targeted 'hot spots' – areas where crime is more concentrated, and preventative patrols can have greatest effect – by ranking stations based on the previous year’s crime rates, and including the top 115 of Greater London’s 270 stations in the experiment.

Researchers also narrowed the experiment’s focus based on 'hot hours' and 'hot days'. Previous data showed the sample platforms experienced more crime and calls to police from Wednesday to Saturday between 3pm and 10pm.

Twenty uniformed BTP officers were selected and trained to work exclusively on patrolling the platforms of the 'treatment' stations during 'hot' days and hours. Each two-person unit was allocated between three and five stations, with platforms patrolled for 15 minutes four times a day.

Officers were asked to conduct these patrols in a random or unpredictable order within the 'hot hours', and encouraged to engage with the public while patrolling.

Police were most effective at preventing platform crime during periods and days when patrols were scheduled – but just 3% of that reduction came when officers were actually scheduled to patrol.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found 'regional' effects: crime in the rest of the station fell almost as much as crime on platforms during the four days when regular patrols were deployed.

“Our findings indicate that consistent patrols can cause large reductions in both crime and emergency calls in areas that have never before been proactively patrolled by police in this way,” added Sherman.

“ ̽��ֱ��more that uniformed police have been there, and the more recently, the less likely future crimes may be to occur.”

This story was amended on 17/01/20 to include additional details from the paper on reductions in crime.

A major experiment introducing proactive policing to Underground platforms finds that short bursts of patrolling create a 'phantom effect': 97% of the resulting crime reduction was during periods when police weren’t actually present.

̽��ֱ��London Underground paradox could have implications for debates on police priorities in an age of austerity

Lawrence Sherman

Marco Chilese

London Tube station

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Police officers learn new methods on ̽��ֱ�� course

ps748 — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 09:33:16 +0000

They’re the first tranche of police officers to take part in the ̽��ֱ��'s Senior Leader Master's Degree Apprenticeship Degree course in Applied Criminology and Police Management. Over the next two years they’ll study latest innovations and discoveries in evidence based policing and exchange ideas about how to improve policing in their own agencies.

Noel McHugh is a Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police:

“It’s been like doing a marathon mentally. It’s been exhausting, but fascinating because of what we’ve learned. It’s been exciting too because you see how you can apply things to policing and what we can do, especially around knife crime. There are so many ideas going around about what we can do in the future.”

̽��ֱ��course is funded through the government’s Apprenticeship Levy, which, in an era of tight police budgets, has been a godsend. Employers who spend more than £3 million a year on salaries, pay half of one per cent of their pay bill into the Levy and this is used to fund extra training needs. ̽��ֱ��officers will assemble in Cambridge for 2 weeks, three times a year. They will write four 3000 word essays, including a critique of a major piece of research before they set to work on their one year dissertation project.

Ahenkora Bediako, is a Detective Inspector with the Metropolitan Police and has been tackling organised crime for 13 years:

“What I like about what I’m learning here is that it’s directly applicable to policing. In policing, we definitely focus on learning by experience and that’s what we value the most but experience is not necessarily the best way of deciding how to do things and that’s what I’ve learned here. Also what I like is that everyone here is passionate about problems and issues and the real stories behind what we’re doing, so there’s a real meaning to that. We’re not just coming to get a Cambridge degree, we’re actually coming to try to make things better.”

Evidence based policing is the practice of applying research to decision making in policing. It’s recently been used in research where knife attack data has been analysed to predict where fatal knife attacks could occur in the future.

Phaedra Binns, is a Manager in the Counter-Terrorism Unit at Thames Valley Police:

“For me personally, you come away and you look at something like the knife crime predictive probability of an incident occurring. That’s something that, for me, is absolutely fascinating and that we can take away and potentially replicate. So now I’m personally motivated to go away and research that and see what’s being done, what’s effective, what we’re currently doing in the force and how we might do it better.”

Professor Sherman taking a class

Professor Lawrence Sherman, Chair of the Police Executive Programme, says:

“I have urged the student apprentices to view the apprenticeship not only as a means of transforming their own capability to protect the public, but also as an asset for the transformation of their entire police agencies.”

̽��ֱ��student apprentices are overwhelmingly from state schools and come from all over England. After the first two weeks, they’ve already been won over by the benefits higher education can offer for policing.

DCI Noel McHugh again:

“It’s really difficult, but my advice to the young people I work with out there, on the estates and that, is that there’s no reason why they can’t come to Cambridge. They should be aiming to get here because education really is empowering. If I can get through, then there’s hope for them”

For more information on the course go to: crim.cam.ac.uk/Courses/mst-courses or ice.cam.ac.uk/course/mst-applied-criminology-and-police-management-senior-leaders-masters-degree-apprenticeship

Some of the officers in the room are involved in counter-terrorism initiatives. Others tackle organised crime, or prevention of street violence, or safeguarding domestic abuse victims. All have risen through the ranks despite a good proportion of them having no prior experience of university. And now they’re sitting in a lecture theatre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge embarking on a new apprenticeship degree course at the Institute of Criminology: 60 new apprentices for the Institute's 60th anniversary year.

We're not just coming to get a Cambridge degree, we're actually coming to try to make things better

Ahenkora Bediako

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge/Paul Seagrove

Group photo of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's first apprentices

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Knife crime: assault data can help forecast fatal stabbings

fpjl2 — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 10:23:41 +0000

Knife crime data from a 12-month period could be used to help forecast the London neighbourhoods most likely to suffer a fatal stabbing the following year, according to latest research.

Justice of the East: research on crime and rehabilitation in our region

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:02:00 +0000

Every day, on the streets of cities, towns and even villages across the East of England, young people take decisions that can – in a moment – alter the course of their life and the lives of others.

These events do not occur in a vacuum: the wrong combinations of environment, timing, people and experience can result in decades lost to crime and addiction – damaging communities and draining the resources of criminal justice services under increasing pressure.

This year, the ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology celebrates its 60th anniversary. Researchers from the Institute have spent years in the local region engaging with people at different points of these adverse cycles – from police and prison officers to kids on street corners – to build an evidence base for effective ways to reduce harm caused by criminality.

While providing prevention lessons for the UK and indeed the world, research that was kick-started and, in many cases, continues to run in the eastern region means that local policymakers have an opportunity to build on projects and findings uniquely relevant to their patch.

Perhaps none more so than the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+): a large longitudinal study that has followed more than 700 young residents of Peterborough from the age of 12 to now over 24, as they navigate school, work, family and the law.

Streets of Peterborough

Led by Professor Per-Olof Wikström, Director of the Centre for Analytic Criminology, the study uses waves of surveys conducted across 13 years that take a singular approach to data gathering. For a given day, the participants are asked to give hour-by-hour detail of where, when, how and with whom they have spent their time. This has been combined with psychological and genetic data, plus two huge surveys each of around 7,000 city residents, to create an extraordinary cross-section of young lives and communities in early 21st-century Britain.

“There is nothing else like this study,” says Wikström. “We have the kind of detail other studies simply don’t have. We can demonstrate not just where ‘hot spots’ of crime occur, but why – which can help us predict future crime-prone areas.”

In a major book, Breaking Rules, the research team showed how certain environments trigger crime, the central importance of personal morality and self-control in “crime-averse” youngsters, and how a third of teens never even consider breaking the law while just 16% commit more than 60% of all adolescent crime.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently finishing off their next book, which will take the study findings up to the present day. “We still have a huge retention rate of 91% for our cohort, many of whom are now back in Peterborough after university and some are now becoming parents themselves,” says senior PADS+ researcher Dr Kyle Treiber. “This data has the potential to reach far beyond criminological contexts. There’s so much information on everything from education and lifestyle to social mobility,” she says.

For Wikström, Peterborough is an ideal city to research the role of people and environment in crime causation. “It’s a diverse place of manageable size, with neighbourhoods at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Itʼs big enough but not too big, so we could cover the whole urban area – and the surrounding Fenland means people tend to live their lives within the city.”

He suggests that the research, now being replicated (and its findings supported) in countries from Sweden to China, could prove useful for city planners in the eastern region, as well as police and social services. “Peterborough is an expanding city, and our data could help developers understand what creates crime-prone people and criminogenic situations.”

Cops and 'hot spots'

Like all cities, Peterborough has its hot spots: streets or intersections where there is a concentration of theft, violence and criminal damage. These are the areas that some of Wikström’s young people know all too well – and policing them is a challenge for a force that works with tightening budgets. To find the most effective ways of reducing crime in neighbourhoods across Peterborough, ̽��ֱ�� criminologists partnered with Cambridgeshire Constabulary to conduct major experimental trials of police deployment.

By randomly allocating 21 extra minutes of daily foot patrol by Police Community Support Officers to some of the cities hottest hot spots, researchers showed an average drop in reported crime of 39%. They worked out that every £10 spent on patrols would ultimately save £56 in prison costs.

“In working with us to conduct experiments, Cambridgeshire Constabulary has set the standard for cost-effectiveness in policing,” says Professor Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology. “ ̽��ֱ��results from Peterborough provide an important benchmark for evaluating police time – challenging those who would rather see patrols in safer neighbourhoods or high traffic areas.”

Fen life

Outside Peterborough, those brought up in the fens can feel their opportunities are limited, and rural life presents its own challenges to those working in the justice system.

A new project led by Cambridge criminologist Dr Caroline Lanskey and King’s College London psychologist Dr Joel Harvey is exploring how the unique Fenland environment stretching east from Peterborough contributes to youth offending. “There are pockets of the fens where isolation, poor transport links and often high levels of deprivation feed into the types of crime young people commit,” she says.

Lanskey and Harvey, with the support of PhD student Hannah Marshall, are working to develop an “explanatory framework” for rural rule-breaking. They are currently conducting interviews, as well as analysing risk assessment data for hundreds of young people from across Cambridgeshire.

“ ̽��ֱ��fens can feel defined by distance: geographically, but also socially and culturally,” says Lanskey. “Youth justice workers struggle to gain the trust of secluded communities – and struggle to reach them. It can take a whole day to see two or three people.” ̽��ֱ��project is aiming to report back findings later this year.

Prison and beyond

When the decisions young people make end badly, it can result in imprisonment. Life inside can be harsh – many of the region’s prisons have suffered extensive funding cuts, as in the rest of Britain – and, once a sentence is completed, opportunities on the outside can be scant.

For Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow (who, like Lanskey, are in the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice), the secure estate holds a vast amount of talent and potential that risks being wasted. Four years ago, they started an initiative called Learning Together: partnering universities with prisons and probation organisations to build “transformative communities”, in which students from both inside and out are taught at the same time by some of the best lecturers in the UK.

̽��ֱ��Learning Together team has worked in several prisons in the eastern region, including Peterborough and Warren Hill near the Suffolk coast. It is with Whitemoor, the high security prison that sits just outside the Fenland town of March, that the team has one of their longest-standing partnerships.

“We started courses in Whitemoor three years ago, and the prison has bought into this work in really exciting ways,” says Ludlow. Bespoke courses on everything from philosophy to creative writing have been taught in Whitemoor; in most cases university students were taken into the prison to learn alongside students currently serving sentences.

“When we move ideas from the learning environment into criminal justice, we show people in prison that they are not defined by their offending, but that there are avenues for them to progress,” says Armstrong.

Learning Together has now instigated over 20 university–prison partnerships nationally. “ ̽��ֱ��relationships of trust built with prisons such as Whitemoor have allowed us to create models of working for partnerships across the country. By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas.”

From Fenland delinquency to policing Peterborough’s streets and the power of prison education, researchers from the Institute of Criminology are engaged in the region to help reduce the harm crime can cause.

By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas

Ruth Armstrong

UK police officer

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Helping police make custody decisions using artificial intelligence

lw355 — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 13:20:08 +0000

"It’s 3am on Saturday morning. ̽��ֱ��man in front of you has been caught in possession of drugs. He has no weapons, and no record of any violent or serious crimes. Do you let the man out on police bail the next morning, or keep him locked up for two days to ensure he comes to court on Monday?”

̽��ֱ��kind of scenario Dr Geoffrey Barnes is describing – whether to detain a suspect in police custody or release them on bail – occurs hundreds of thousands of times a year across the UK. ̽��ֱ��outcome of this decision could be major for the suspect, for public safety and for the police.

“ ̽��ֱ��police officers who make these custody decisions are highly experienced,” explains Barnes. “But all their knowledge and policing skills can’t tell them the one thing they need to now most about the suspect – how likely is it that he or she is going to cause major harm if they are released? This is a job that really scares people – they are at the front line of risk-based decision-making.”

Barnes and Professor Lawrence Sherman, who leads the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, have been working with police forces around the world to ask whether AI can help.

“Imagine a situation where the officer has the benefit of a hundred thousand, and more, real previous experiences of custody decisions?” says Sherman. “No one person can have that number of experiences, but a machine can.”

In mid-2016, with funding from the Monument Trust, the researchers installed the world’s first AI tool for helping police make custodial decisions in Durham Constabulary.

Called the Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART), the AI-based technology uses 104,000 histories of people previously arrested and processed in Durham custody suites over the course of five years, with a two-year follow-up for each custody decision. Using a method called “random forests”, the model looks at vast numbers of combinations of ‘predictor values’, the majority of which focus on the suspect’s offending history, as well as age, gender and geographical area.

“These variables are combined in thousands of different ways before a final forecasted conclusion is reached,” explains Barnes. “Imagine a human holding this number of variables in their head, and making all of these connections before making a decision. Our minds simply can’t do it.”

̽��ֱ��aim of HART is to categorise whether in the next two years an offender is high risk (highly likely to commit a new serious offence such as murder, aggravated violence, sexual crimes or robbery); moderate risk (likely to commit a non-serious offence); or low risk (unlikely to commit any offence).

“ ̽��ֱ��need for good prediction is not just about identifying the dangerous people,” explains Sherman. “It’s also about identifying people who definitely are not dangerous. For every case of a suspect on bail who kills someone, there are tens of thousands of non-violent suspects who are locked up longer than necessary.”

Durham Constabulary want to identify the ‘moderate-risk’ group – who account for just under half of all suspects according to the statistics generated by HART. These individuals might benefit from their Checkpoint programme, which aims to tackle the root causes of offending and offer an alternative to prosecution that they hope will turn moderate risks into low risks.

“It’s needles and haystacks,” says Sherman. “On the one hand, the dangerous ‘needles’ are too rare for anyone to meet often enough to spot them on sight. On the other, the ‘hay’ poses no threat and keeping them in custody wastes resources and may even do more harm than good.” A randomised controlled trial is currently under way in Durham to test the use of Checkpoint among those forecast as moderate risk.

HART is also being refreshed with more recent data – a step that Barnes explains will be an important part of this sort of tool: “A human decision-maker might adapt immediately to a changing context – such as a prioritisation of certain offences, like hate crime – but the same cannot necessarily be said of an algorithmic tool. This suggests the need for careful and constant scrutiny of the predictors used and for frequently refreshing the algorithm with more recent historical data.”

No prediction tool can be perfect. An independent validation study of HART found an overall accuracy of around 63%. But, says Barnes, the real power of machine learning comes not from the avoidance of any error at all but from deciding which errors you most want to avoid.

“Not all errors are equal,” says Sheena Urwin, head of criminal justice at Durham Constabulary and a graduate of the Institute of Criminology’s Police Executive Master of Studies Programme. “ ̽��ֱ��worst error would be if the model forecasts low and the offender turned out high.”

“In consultation with the Durham police, we built a system that is 98% accurate at avoiding this most dangerous form of error – the ‘false negative’ – the offender who is predicted to be relatively safe, but then goes on to commit a serious violent offence,” adds Barnes. “AI is infinitely adjustable and when constructing an AI tool it’s important to weigh up the most ethically appropriate route to take.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also stress that HART’s output is for guidance only, and that the ultimate decision is that of the police officer in charge.

“HART uses Durham’s data and so it’s only relevant for offences committed in the jurisdiction of Durham Constabulary. This limitation is one of the reasons why such models should be regarded as supporting human decision-makers not replacing them,” explains Barnes. “These technologies are not, of themselves, silver bullets for law enforcement, and neither are they sinister machinations of a so-called surveillance state.”

Some decisions, says Sherman, have too great an impact on society and the welfare of individuals for them to be influenced by an emerging technology.

Where AI-based tools provide great promise, however, is to use the forecasting of offenders’ risk level for effective ‘triage’, as Sherman describes: “ ̽��ֱ��police service is under pressure to do more with less, to target resources more efficiently, and to keep the public safe.

“ ̽��ֱ��tool helps identify the few ‘needles in the haystack’ who pose a major danger to the community, and whose release should be subject to additional layers of review. At the same time, better triaging can lead to the right offenders receiving release decisions that benefit both them and society.”

Inset image: read more about our AI research in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Police at the “front line” of difficult risk-based judgements are trialling an AI system trained by ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge criminologists to give guidance using the outcomes of five years of criminal histories.

̽��ֱ��tool helps identify the few ‘needles in the haystack’ who pose a major danger to the community, and whose release should be subject to additional layers of review

Lawrence Sherman

Rene Böhmer on Unsplash

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Domestic abuse ‘workshops’ reduce repeat offending and harm to public – study

fpjl2 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:15:29 +0000

̽��ֱ��first domestic abuse policing strategy in UK history to be trialled under experimental conditions has shown that an inexpensive two-day course in behaviour management for first offenders resulted in 35% fewer men reoffending against their partner, and reduced further harm to victims by over a quarter.

Researchers at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology worked with Hampshire Constabulary to conduct the study using the recently developed CARA (Cautions and Relationship Abuse) programme: small-group discussion workshops for men who received conditional cautions for first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that, in just this initial study of hundreds of Southampton-area offenders over a 12-month period, the CARA programme prevented significant harm to victims, hundreds of prison days, and consequently saved thousands of pounds.

̽��ֱ��findings are published in full in this week’s print edition of the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing.

̽��ֱ��team behind the study say that several police forces want to replicate the use of the CARA course, developed by the Hampton Trust domestic abuse charity. However, they say that current guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service restricts the use of conditional cautions for domestic abuse across the country.

“Dealing with high volumes of low-harm common assault cases against intimate partners is a significant issue for police forces across the UK, particularly in times of continued austerity,” said study lead author Professor Heather Strang, Director of Research at Cambridge’s Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology.

“No other programme to our knowledge now has such strong evidence of yielding a substantial reduction in harm to victims of domestic abuse.

“ ̽��ֱ��CARA programme should be approved for general use with low-harm first offenders, preferably with further randomised trials to ensure it works for different communities across England and Wales.”

̽��ֱ��study only involved adult men who admitted their offence, were not judged ‘high risk’, and had no record of any violence in the preceding two years. All victims agreed to their partners’ participation.

To be eligible for the experiment, the offence had to be classified as either common assault/battery, criminal damage, harassment, threatening behaviour, or domestic theft.

Of the 293 offenders who fit the strict criteria between August 2012 and November 2015, around half were randomly assigned to attend CARA workshops, run by experienced facilitators from the Southampton-based Hampton Trust.

̽��ֱ��CARA programme consists of two five-hour group discussions of between four and seven men, held on weekends one month apart, in which facilitators raise questions that cause attendees to reflect upon their behaviour and how they might change it.

Offenders in the other half, the control group, were given ‘conditional cautions’: meaning any repeat offence within four months would see prosecution in court. This is a commonly deployed police response to first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse.

Professor Strang and colleagues – including several Hampshire police leaders enrolled on the Cambridge Police Executive Programme – followed up with offenders a year after the first arrest. They found that 35% fewer men in the CARA group had committed any further offence against their partner.

However, Cambridge co-author Professor Lawrence Sherman describes such simplistic ‘crime counts’ as unhelpful when determining the real cost of crime: harm caused to victims. “ ̽��ֱ��key result for the team came when we analysed all reoffending in both groups using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index,” he said.

This Harm Index, or CCHI, is a new tool that measures harm by weighting the severity of each crime in sentencing guidelines for different offences, rather than just totting up overall crime figures. ̽��ֱ��Office of National Statistics credits the CCHI as the stimulus for its own (modified) version of a harm index, introduced earlier this year.

Overall, those in the CARA group caused 27% less harm per offender to their partners than the control group.

Using the CCHI, the team calculated that the recommended number of prison days under English sentencing guidelines for reoffenders in the year following the first arrest was an average of 8.4 days for the CARA attendees, compared to an average of 11.6 days for offenders not sent to CARA.

“This would mean that, for every thousand first time offenders sent to CARA workshops, 380 days of recommended imprisonment would be saved, and victims would be spared the inflicted harm equivalent to 380 common assaults, or 19 assaults with actual bodily harm,” said Sherman.

Men who participated in the CARA workshops described having a greater understanding of the impact of their behaviour on partners and children, and when to walk away from a fight. Some talked of going on to attend support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous as a result.

Chantal Hughes, Chief Executive of the Hampton Trust, said: "We know from consultations with victims that they want help for their partners. Those choosing not to remain in an intimate relationship often have children, and this means child contact arrangements. Victims have advised us that workshops such as CARA are a positive and much needed intervention."

Study co-author Scott Chilton, Assistant Chief Constable of Hampshire Police and Chair of the Society of Evidence Based Policing, said: “CARA is an outstanding example of evidence based innovation that can influence national police policy and practices.

“This type of research, where professionals from law enforcement work with academia and charitable organisations, has proved to be extremely promising.”

First UK experiment on policing domestic abuse finds fewer men reoffending against partners – and reoffenders causing less harm to victims – when mandated to attend charity-run discussion course. Researchers call on Government to approve rollout of programme across England and Wales.

No other programme to our knowledge now has such strong evidence of yielding a substantial reduction in harm to victims of domestic abuse

Heather Strang

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Vice-Chancellor’s awards recognise the difference researchers make to society

cjb250 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:44:35 +0000

̽��ֱ��announcement was made at a prize ceremony held at the Old Schools on 13 July. At the same event, one of Cambridge’s leading experts on EU law – and in particular, Brexit – received one of the Vice Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards for her work around the EU Referendum.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says: “I would like to offer my warm congratulations to the recipients of our Impact and Public Engagement Awards. These are outstanding examples that reflect the tremendous efforts by our researchers to make a major contribution to society.”

Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards were established to recognise and reward those whose research has led to excellent impact beyond academia, whether on the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life. Each winner receives a prize of £1,000 and a trophy, with the overall winner - Dr Alexander Patto from the Department of Physics – receiving £2,000.

This year’s winners are:

Overall winner: Dr Alexander Patto (Department of Physics)

WaterScope

Using an open-source flexure microscope, spin-out company WaterScope is developing rapid, automated water testing kits and affordable diagnostics to empower developing communities. Its microscopes are being used for education, to inspire future scientists from India to Colombia. Its open-source microscope is supporting local initiatives, with companies such as STIClab in Tanzania making medical microscopes from recycled plastic bottles.

Elroy Dimson (Judge Business School)

‘Active Ownership’: Engaging with investee companies on environmental and social issues

‘Active Ownership’ refers to commitment by asset owners and their portfolio managers to engage with the businesses they own, focusing on issues that matter to all stakeholders and to the economy as a whole, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. By providing evidence to guide ESG strategy, Professor Dimson’s research has had a substantial impact on investment policy and practice.

Professor Nick Morrell (Department of Medicine)

From genetics to new treatments in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Severe high blood pressure in the lungs, known as idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, is a rare disease that affects approximately 1,000 people in the UK. ̽��ֱ��condition usually affects young women and average life expectancy is three to five years. Existing treatments improve symptoms but have little impact on survival. Professor Morrell has introduced routine genetic testing for this condition, and found that one in four patients carry a particular genetic mutation associated with more severe disease and worse survival. His research has identified new ways to treat the disease, the most promising of which is being commercialised through a university spin-out biotech company.

Professor Lawrence Sherman, Peter Neyroud, Dr Barak Ariel, Dr Cristobal Weinborn and Eleanor Neyroud (Institute of Criminology)

Cambridge Crime Harm Index

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Crime Harm Index is a tool for creating a single metric for the seriousness of crime associated with any one offender, victim, address, community, or prevention strategy, supplementing traditional measures giving all crimes equal weight. ̽��ֱ��UK Office of National Statistics credits the index as the stimulus to institute its own, modified version from 2017. Police use the Cambridge index to target highest-harm offenders, victims, places, times and days, differences in crime harm per capita differs across communities or within them over time, adding precision to decisions for allocating scarce resources in times of budget cuts.

Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards were set up to recognise and reward those who undertake quality engagement with research. Each winner receives a £1000 personal cash prize and a trophy. This year’s winners are:

Professor Catherine Barnard (Faculty of Law)

In the run up to the EU membership referendum Professor Barnard developed a range of outputs to explain key issues at stake including migration, which forms the basis of her research, in addition to the wider EU law remit. Harnessing the timeliness of the political climate, Barnard’s videos, online articles, radio and TV interviews have supported her engagement across 12 town hall events from Exeter to Newcastle, an open prison and round-table discussions with various public groups. She has also provided a number of briefing sessions to major political party MPs and peers. She has become a trusted public figure, and researcher, on EU law, Brexit and surrounding issues, ensuring that the voices of those key to the research process are heard and listened to.

Dr Elisa Laurenti (Wellcome/MRC Stem Cell Institute and Department of Haematology)

Dr Laurenti has engaged over 2,500 people, at six separate events, with her Stem Cell Robots activity. She collaborated with a researcher in educational robotics to produce this robot-based activity, which maps a stem cell’s differentiation to become a specific cell type. ̽��ֱ��activity has provided a platform for children, families and adults to discuss ethics and clinical applications of stem cell research.

Dr Nai-Chieh Liu (Department of Veterinary Medicine)

Dr Liu has developed a non-invasive respiratory function test for short-skulled dog breeds, including French bulldogs and pugs, which suffer from airway obstruction. She has engaged with dog owners by attending dog shows, dog club meetings and breeders’ premises to break down barriers between publics and veterinarians working to improve the health of these dogs. As a result of this engagement, the UK French bulldog club and the Bulldog Breed Council have adopted health testing schemes based on Dr Liu’s research.

Dr Neil Stott and Belinda Bell (Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation, Judge Business School)

Dr Stott and Miss Bell established Cambridge Social Ventures to embed research around social innovation into a practical workshop to support emerging social entrepreneurs. Since the first workshop in 2014, they have reached almost 500 people wanting to create social change by starting and growing a business. ̽��ֱ��team goes to considerable efforts to reach out to participants from non-traditional backgrounds and to ensure workshops are inclusive and accessible to a wide range of people by incorporating online engagement with work in the community.

Amalia Thomas (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics)

Amalia Thomas researches photoelasticity, a property by which certain materials transmit light differently when subjected to a force. Amalia has developed an engaging exhibition for secondary school students comprising interactive elements, which uses photoelasticity to visualise force, work and power.

Dr Frank Waldron-Lynch, Jane Kennet and Katerina Anselmiova (Department of Medicine and Department of Clinical Biochemistry)

Since the commencement of their research programme to develop drugs for Type 1 Diabetes, Dr Waldron-Lynch, Ms Kennet and Ms Anselmiova have developed a public engagement programme to engage participants, patients, families, funders, colleagues, institutions, companies and the community, with the aim of ensuring that their research remains relevant to stakeholder needs. Amongst their outputs, the team has formed a patient support group in addition to developing an online engagement strategy through social media platforms. Most recently, they have collaborated with GlaxoSmithKline to offer patients the opportunity to participate in clinical studies at all stages of their disease.

An open source, 3D-printable microscope that forms the cornerstone of rapid, automated water testing kits for use in low and middle-income countries, has helped a Cambridge researcher and his not-for-profit spin-out company win the top prize in this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Nithi Anand

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