Reimagining policing structures, technology adoption, and accountability frameworks for the digital age whilst maintaining public trust and consent.
Following the expert discussion ‘Reimagining Policing Futures: How to Design a Police Force for the Future’, convened by UNICRI and the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), four position papers were published bringing together key conclusions from the discussion. The innovative approaches explored in the papers address a central question: how can police organizations be best structured to tackle cybercrime and leverage technology in the digital age?
The thread that runs through all the papers is a call for institutionalized adaptability grounded in principles of good policing.
Technology can be leveraged to do what was previously impossible and share information securely within and between police and other institutions – crucial in today’s interconnected world of crime – to empower actors to make and coordinate more effective, better informed decisions.
Following this call for adaptability is a supporting element also inherent in each of the position papers, namely the proposition that legitimacy and operational effectiveness are not in tension — that the constraints imposed by consent, accountability, and the rule of law are not obstacles to effective policing but rather conditions of it; especially when building adaptability into institutions. Policing institutions that enjoy genuine public trust can do things that institutions operating under suspicion cannot: they can obtain voluntary cooperation, share information across agencies, deploy new capabilities with community support, and maintain the legitimacy that sustains their authority through crises. Investment in good governance of digital policing is therefore not a cost to be minimised, but a return to be cultivated.
You can find the papers here:
Position Paper: Reimagining policing: designing a blueprint for the digital future
Paper 1: Renewing the foundations of consent-based policing
Paper 2: Hierarchy and organisational resilience: empowering policing on the frontline
Paper 3: Policing in a digital age: what could a civil public safety platform look like?
There is also a presentation available here.
You are encouraged to comment on the papers and contribute to the discussion on the LSE innovation hub. Please join here.
By Tom Kirchmaier and Mick O’Connell
This collaboration between LSE Innovation and the United Nations Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), through its Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, brings together experts from around the world to review the way police forces operate in society and to consider how they might be reformed to become more effective at policing safe and free societies in the digital age.
