The Policing Academic Centre of Excellence - Leicester, Aston and Birmingham
The Policing Academic Centre of Excellence - Leicester, Aston and Birmingham (P-ACE LAB) is an interdisciplinary consortium that will co-produce solutions, harnessing the latest advances in science and technology.
The Institutions are leaders in policing research and P-ACE LAB will build upon this experience to incorporate the necessary diversity in people, resources, expertise, and partnerships, all underpinned by robust governance structures to ensure successful delivery.
P-ACE Lab will be:
Problem-led rather than discipline-led
We have a history of interdisciplinary working across the social, physical and computer sciences that delivers actionable solutions to strategic, operational and organisational policing challenges.
Co-produced
P-ACE LAB’s activities will be co-produced with policing, optimising knowledge mobilisation into policy/practice, building deep academic-police collaboration, and delivering significantly enhanced capability/capacity for the development and implementation of science and technology solutions within policing.
Whenever possible, community groups, service users, and partners will be consulted for ethical and social acceptability of our solutions to ensure trust and confidence in policing.
Transparent and ethical in its use of data analytics
While data analytics has significant potential to support policing, there are associated risks (e.g., privacy, bias/discrimination). P-ACE LAB will isolate these risks, ensuring analytic solutions are sufficiently transparent, replicable, and explainable to build public trust and confidence.
Future-facing and agile
Crime is evolving, often defying geographic boundaries. Fast-growing cyber and online threats require global insights and actions. Balanced with the recognition of borderless threat is the awareness that all victims of crime are local. In the context of the Safer Streets Mission, P-ACE LAB will work with police to anticipate future trends through continuous horizon scanning and respond with tailored solutions using its vast expertise.
Sustainable
By training doctoral and postdoctoral students and leveraging our Doctoral Training Centres, P-ACE LAB will build an ecosystem of policing- academic partnerships, with specialised researchers equipped to respond to key policing areas of interest (ARI).
With the above principles underpinning our work, P-ACE LAB will amplify the proven expertise across our institutions, strengthening existing and creating new collaborations to deliver innovative solutions that meet police needs. Our activities will be geared to enhance academic understanding of policing, benefitting academics across career-stages, and will enhance police productivity and capacity to access, produce and effectively utilise evidence.
Drawing on our significant experience of knowledge mobilisation, we will create fast-track pipelines for delivering science and technology solutions in a quick, effective and safe way that is welcomed by communities. We will assist the police in rebuilding public trust and confidence, allowing for a renewed vision of ‘policing by consent’ for a modern, science and technology-led police force.
Methodologically, P-ACE LAB is diverse, ranging from the use of data science and AI tools to co-design and participatory research and rapid knowledge mobilisation. P-ACE LAB will ensure that any new science and technology developed or tested will be environmentally sustainable.
Institutional Leads
- University of Leicester – Professor Matt Tonkin
- Aston University – Professor Tim Grant
- University of Birmingham – Professor Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay
Other P-ACE LAB leads
- Professor Joanne Murphy, University of Birmingham – Flexible Fund lead
- Professor Jessica Woodhams, University of Birmingham – Knowledge Mobilisation lead
- Professor Fern Elsdon-Baker, University of Birmingham – Ethics and Governance lead
- Dr Ralph Morton, Aston University and Dr Emily Evans, University of Birmingham – Early Career Researcher leads
Expertise and topics covered
ARI 1: Building and Maintaining Public Trust
ARI 1: Building and Maintaining Public Trust
Leads: Professor Heather Flowe (University of Birmingham) and Dr Claire Davis (University of Leicester)
- Ethical, legal and acceptable development and deployment of science and technology
- Public perception of new technologies
- Building trust among marginalised communities
- Victim and witness identifications and evidence giving
ARI 2: Crime Prevention
ARI 2: Crime Prevention
Leads: Professor Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay (University of Birmingham) and Professor Matt Hopkins (University of Leicester)
- Safe online and offline public spaces and behavioural linkage
- Crime investigation in the clear and dark web (child sexual exploitation) and extremist fora
- Police well-being
- Evaluation of policing interventions
- Acquisitive crime (retail crime, burglary, robbery, fraud, money laundering)
- Hate crime
- Violent crime including corrosive substance offences and football-related violence
- Sexual offences
- Youth justice
- Electronic monitoring
- Cross-border policing
ARI 4: Mobility
ARI 4: Mobility
Leads: Professor Patricia Thornley (Aston University) and Dr Sarah Jane Fox (University of Leicester)
- Road safety
- Autonomous systems (e.g., drones and vehicles)
- Sustainable transport solutions
- Crowd evacuation
- Microwave integrated systems
- Robotics
ARI 5: Identification and Tracing
ARI 5: Identification and Tracing
Leads: Professor Carole McCartney (University of Leicester) and Dr Krzysztof Kredens (Aston University)
- Forensic linguistics and author identification
- Deepfake algorithm detection
- Digital forensics
- Police interviewing
- Validation of identification evidence
ARI 7: Analytics
ARI 7: Analytics
Leads: Professor Tim Grant (Aston University) and Dr Fuxiang Chen (University of Leicester)
- Improving data quality and digital futures
- Machine learning and AI (mathematical foundations and ethical application of such technology)
- Analysing text-based data (e.g., natural language processing and large language models)
- Forensic data science
Published research
Please use these links to search research available from the P-ACE LAB institutions.
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