Policing and Data Analytics (Taught)

Police play a crucial role in society, and policing has a direct impact on the lives, freedoms and security of citizens. Police rely increasingly on evidence and research to design interventions, allocate resources, and evaluate their work. This programme examines key challenges in contemporary policing and provides students with strong quantitative analysis skills to analyse policing. Students will have the opportunity to gain an advanced understanding of how policing works in and tries to adapt to our contemporary world.

Students will address cutting-edge critical, conceptual and theoretical analyses of policing, human rights, privacy and surveillance studies, domestic violence, hate crime, and gender-based violence. They will gain an applied understanding of different research methods and concepts including randomised control trials, the use of ‘R’ and conceptualisations of causality, allowing them to design and critically analyse approaches to gathering evidence. They will have the opportunity to hear from police themselves about how they respond to these challenges. They will be taught by our academic experts who have worked closely with police as well as campaigning for police reform to address brutality, abuse and misconduct. The module equips students with the necessary skills to evaluate the current academic and policy literature on policing and develop a critical understanding of key topics in policing.

• Conceptualising Causality

• Randomised Controlled Trials

• The use of R

• Internal and External Validity

• Between- and Within-subjects Designs

• Difference in Differences Designs ·

• Regression Discontinuity Designs

• Cybercrime, the dark net, policing the cybersphere

• Cop culture through history

• AI, big tech, and digital policing

• Policing contested crimes: hate, crimes of abuse, and political protest.

• Globalisation and crime

• Vulnerability, harm and protecting the public

• Police in the media and popular culture

• International policing and borders

• Crime in the city

• Police ethics

• Gender, race, and crime

• Human rights

Course Modules

Please see our website for information on core, compulsory and optional modules.