Police & People in London — What’s Changed in 40 Years?
The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology and UCL’s Centre for Global City Policing are pleased to co-host an afternoon event that reflects on four decades of change in policing, and the experience of being policed, in London.
In the late-1970s, the police’s unfair treatment of London’s residents, allegations of widespread corruption, and plummeting public trust spurred an ambitious research programme to understand The Police & People in London (1983). That effort yielded pioneering answers about what police do, how they do it, and the effects of that work.
Forty years later, what—if anything—has changed? This afternoon event draws together new research about police and policing in London, and reflects on whether intervening efforts to strengthen public trust have delivered.
Outline of the event
- Welcome remarks (2pm-2:15pm): Ben Bradford & Johann Koehler
- The police in action (2:15pm-3:15pm):
- Paul Dawson
- Amal Ali, Arabella Kyprianides, & Thiago Oliveira
- Experiences of policing (3:30pm-4:30pm):
- Jennifer Brown
- Ben Bradford, Jonathan Jackson & Johann Koehler
- Closing Reflections (4:30pm-5pm): David Smith, co-author of the 1983 report
Chair: Dr Johann Koehler (London School of Economics)
Reception: 5.00pm-6.30pm, Shaw Library (6th floor of the OLD Building)
Meet our speakers, discussant and chair
Speakers:
Amal Ali is a PhD candidate in Social Research Methods. She is also a Research Assistant at UCL’s Centre for Global City Policing. Her doctoral research examines ethnic/racial disproportionality in police use of force, with a specific focus on the use of Tasers in England and Wales.
Ben Bradford is Professor of Global City Policing at the Department of Security and Crime Science, where he is Director of the Centre for Global City Policing. His research interests include public trust, police legitimacy, cooperation and compliance in justice settings, and social identity as a factor in all these processes. He has also published on organisational justice within police agencies, ethnic and other disparities in policing, and elements of public-facing police work such as neighbourhood patrol, community engagement and stop and search.
Jennifer Brown is a Visiting Professor at the LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology, and she is currently the deputy chair of the Ethics Panel of the Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime and a panel member of the New Zealand Police Expert Panel on Emergent Technologies.
Paul Dawson is currently Head of Evidence and Insight – an internally based analytics unit at the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) with the aim of conducting a wide-ranging programme to the benefit of crime, justice and policy making in London.
Jonathan Jackson is Professor of Research Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is an Honorary Professor of Criminology at the University of Sydney Law School and an Affiliated Scholar in the Justice Collaboratory of Yale Law School. Working at the intersection of psychology and law, his research focuses on procedural justice (the importance of fair process in interactions between power-holders and subordinates), distributive justice (the allocation of finite resources that determine who gets the benefits and burdens of social control) and legitimacy (perceptions of the right to power) in the context of the criminal justice system.
Arabella Kyprianides holds a PhD in Social Psychology and is a Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Security and Crime Science. She is an active member of the UCL Centre for Global City Policing and the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration. Arabella’s research explores public trust, police legitimacy, and compliance—particularly in the context of policing marginalised communities—as well as the social determinants of mental health and wellbeing among vulnerable groups, with a specific interest in the role of social identity.
Thiago Oliveira draws on theories from sociology, social psychology, and social policy to investigate policing's sometimes conflicting objectives of crime deterrence and public legitimacy. He is particularly interested in understanding the implications of confrontational proactive policing tactics, police use-of-force, and procedural justice policing to community trust, legal cynicism, and violence in large cities in the Global North and the Global South.
Discussant:
David Smith is Honorary Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh. In the 1970s he directed the study of Police & People in London (1983), which is the reference point for the day’s event. His recent publications have been on race, crime and criminal justice, the links between offending and victimisation, the influence of friends on youth offending, and the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system.
Chair: Dr Johann Koehler
Dr Johann Koehler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Director of the LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology. He researches the origins, applications and limitations of evidence-based criminal justice. Further to that end, Johann’s recent work seeks to understand the promise and peril of reform initiatives in institutions of justice, from cops through to courts and corrections.
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