Over recent years Evidence Based Policing (EBP) has begun to reshape the policing landscape and its relationship to University research. Arguably the momentum for this change within the UK originated within the Cabinet Office as a means of rationalising public expenditure under the austerity agenda of the Coalition Government. Nonetheless, since 2010 this way of proactively driving policy has been increasingly incorporated into mainstream policing discourse and practice primarily through the emergence of the College of Policing and its remit of evidence based Authorised Professional Practice. A series of research centres based in HEIs across the UK have begun to develop to service this new knowledge economy. 

 

However, it is also equally clear that police reform is something that most powerfully flows reactively from incidents that bring police legitimacy into question among the general public. For example, in the UK perhaps the most significant reforms to the policing of protest in the last thirty years have flowed directly from the ‘legitimacy crisis’ that was sparked by the death of Ian Tomlinson during the protests surrounding the G20 International Summit in London in 2009. Equally, in the USA, a Task Force on 21st Century Policing was initiated by President Obama directly as a consequence of the political pressures that grew primarily from the widespread urban unrest across the US that was itself sparked by a series of fatal police shootings of black men and boys. 

​

Thus, despite the expressed commitment to EPB, it is often the case that it requires some form of social and political crisis to open up the possibility of research based reforms in a context where otherwise such changes may not be possible. Moreover, even when research is in a position to affect policing it is still necessary for researchers to navigate the complex political, cultural and organisational barriers to police reform. How then does the research community need to understand its relationship to policing both within and beyond the UK? What are the challenges and opportunities ahead of us in forging a connection to external stakeholders like the police in our struggle to make our research relevant to policy and practice? 

​

This workshop hosted by KPAC in collaboration with the Centre for Social Policy is designed to bring interested academics, students and practitioners together to explore these questions through a series of presentations and subsequent audience focused discussion. It is designed to stimulate some early discussions within and across KPAC about some of the challenges involved in establish the Collaboration as a leading centre for policing research, impact and teaching.