The UK Needs Data Driven Policing
Electronic social change is putting significant pressure on policing. A new Report, Data-Driven Policing and Public Value, by The Police Foundation explains how the UK police are operating under considerable stress with reduced budgets, changing crime and a lack of new policing skills.
Direct funding from UK central government has reduced by over 30% in the last decade yet the pressure on policing has significantly intensified in the same period.
There has been a shift towards dealing with complex areas
of crime such as domestic violence and child sexual exploitation and abuse, which require a different skill set and are more resource intensive to investigate. We have seen a rise in demand for the police to respond to non-crime incidents such as mental health crises and missing persons.
A huge amount of crime is also either moving online
or is being cyber-enabled. Around half of all crime affecting individual victims in England and Wales is now cybercrime or fraud, much of which is now cyber- enabled.
The Internet has created new types of computer misuse which has allowed criminals new ways to find targets for fraud to sexual abuse.
The Report explains how new technologies are affecting policing such as the Internet of Things, Blockchain, 5G networks and the growing use by criminals of encryption. The future trends suggest that by 2020 over 30 billion devices and that by 2025 this could rise to over 75 Billion allowing criminals a massive area of potential attack. Hacker can steal people’s data and get to their money and take control of Internet devices.
The Report focuses on suggestions and ideas to make future policing more data and IT driven everything from body worn cameras to uses of data analytics.
All this requires more training and money for policing’s future but the effects would be a far more effective police force for the future changes to the digital environment.
The Report can be read at: Police Foundation
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