On Wednesday 8th March 2023 the CJC will be hosting a book launch to celebrate one of our members Dr. Zoha Waseem and her publication 'Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi'.

The discussants for this event will be: Prof. Ana Aliverti, University of Warwick and Dr.Sobia Ahmed Kaker, University of Essex.

The police force is one of the most distrusted institutions in Pakistan, notorious for its corruption and brutality. In both colonial and postcolonial contexts, directives to confront security threats have empowered law enforcement agents, while the lack of adequate reform has upheld institutional weaknesses. This exploration of policing in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and financial capital, reveals many colonial continuities. Both civilian and military regimes continue to ensure the suppression of the policed via this institution, itself established to militarily subjugate and exploit in the interests of the ruling class. However, contemporary policing practice is not a simple product of its colonial heritage: it has also evolved to confront new challenges and political realities. Based on extensive fieldwork and around 200 interviews, this ethnographic study reveals a distinctly ‘postcolonial condition of policing’. Mutually reinforcing phenomena of militarisation and informality have been exacerbated by an insecure state that routinely conflates combatting crime, maintaining public order and ensuring national security. This is evident not only in spectacular displays of violence and malpractice, but also in police officers’ routine work. Caught in the middle of the country’s armed conflicts, their encounters with both state and society are a story of insecurity and uncertainty.
Further information: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/insecure-guardians/

This will be a hybrid event and we do hope that you can join us.

The event will be held in Room S2.09 and will include a wine reception from 5:30 p.m.

For those of you joining us virtually Click here to join the meeting. Link opens in a new window

• Date: Wednesday 14th March 2023
• Time: 14:00 - 15:00
• Location: Webinar Online

The benefits of arts and culture in social, civic, health, and economic terms are widely researched, but until now, police forces have seldom engaged with creative endeavours in a sustained and systematic way. In 2019, however, West Midlands Police (WMP) embarked on a unique partnership with the Coventry City of Culture Trust (the Trust) in the delivery of Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. This partnership sought to enable officers to engage with arts and culture as a means of building positive community relationships, particularly amongst more vulnerable and seldom heard communities.

In this webinar, we will explore the findings from our research into this partnership, and into the broader potential for police partnerships with artists and creative practitioners outside and beyond the City of Culture. We situate our analysis within the context of a widespread crisis in police legitimacy, considering the ways in which arts-based interventions can offer a democratising space in which mutual perceptions can begin to shift; and exploring the complexities and challenges of these endeavours.

The Brain, Behaviour and Society GRPLink opens in a new window has granted COPR a small pot of money (£5000) to support Warwick researchers who are conducting interdisciplinary police-related research.

If you're a Warwick researcher and have a small pilot project, workshop, panel discussion, seminar series, impact activity etc you wish to launch between now and 31 July, 2023, and require a small amount of financial support, please contact Profs Jackie Hodgson (Jackie.Hodgson@warwick.ac.uk) and Kim Wade (K.A.Wade@warwick.ac.uk). The fund is available to support pump-priming activities such as research assistance for literature reviews, pilot projects, uniting potential collaborators, or co-creation with non-academic stakeholders.

Send us a 1-page (max) outline of your project objectives, description of activities, intended outputs, timeline and brief budget.

The fund is available to support Warwick researchers at all stages in their career, including PhD students.

Call for Forces to Participate in New Research

Rebecca Plimmer is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Warwick University. Rebecca’s research explores the extent to which individual factors, such as officer and suspect demographic’s, behaviour, personality traits, and values, best predict attitudes about violence (e.g., rape and sexual assault/violence against women, racial discrimination, violent ideation) and decision making (i.e., use of force acceptability and reporting). Rebecca is aiming to obtain a sample of over 500 police officers from forces across England and Wales. Her project has received Chief Officer approval from West Mercia and the research is under review at West Midlands and Warwickshire Police. If this research is something you would be interested in taking part in, advertising, or know of any other police forces/contacts who may be interested in take part, please contact Rebecca (Rebecca.plimmer@warwick.ac.uk).

For further information, see here.

When: DATE TBC

Where: Room S2.12 (Law School, Social Sciences Building)

Event Information:

This seminar will be a joint effort between the Criminal Justice Centre and the Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR) at Warwick.

It will be focused on Trauma in Policing and will feature two presentations.

The first paper by Karen Lumsden (Senior Lecturer, University of Aberdeen) and Alex Black (Lecturer, University of Sheffield Hallam) is entitled 'Emotional Labour in policing: qualitative findings on police officer and staff experiences of call handling and death work.

The second presentation will be by Tony Eustace (Inspector leading on Trauma Aware Practice in the Custody environment, West Midlands Police)

The Centre for Operational Policing Research is thrilled to be hosting a “Technologies of Criminal Justice” Seminar and Networking Event on the 29th of April 2022. This event is supported by the Behaviour, Brain and Society GRP.

This event is open to all Warwick researchers - from PhD students through to senior colleagues - who are interested in the role of technology in the criminal justice system. Learn more about the fascinating research that is happening within COPR, from Digital Forensics and Technology, to Policing models and the Law, as well as the science behind criminal behaviours, and more!

Prof Tom Sorell (Professor of Politics and Philosophy, PAIS) will gave an invited talk at a panel on digital ethics at the NPCC Internet Intelligence and Investigations Conference 2022 on March 24 in Hinkley. You can read more about the conference here.

Dr Christopher Nathan (Honorary Research Fellow, PAIS) has published a new monograph titled "The Ethics of Undercover Policing". For details see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethics-of-Undercover-Policing/Nathan/p/book/9780367264581

Policing is, historically, relatively new. Professor Christopher Nathan's paper Ethics of Policing explores salient questions in relation to policing, including how police are understood, what their purpose is, and on what terms is the institution of the police a justified institution?