About this research

This research will employ statistical methods and big data analytics to measure police effectiveness and assess public confidence in policing.

Police forces are responsible for preventing crimes, investigating criminal incidents, and arresting suspected criminals in order to bring them to justice. It is important to establish how well police forces perform, given the important public resources that are invested in them, and whether they satisfy the public in their duties.

The research consists of two parts: to measure police effectiveness in England and Wales, and to gain an insight into levels of public trust in policing by analysing data extracted from social media platforms. The research will focus on quantification of police effectiveness and efficiency using crime data, police operational data, and local socio-demographic data, and then address public trust in policing using data extracted from social media platforms such as Twitter. The research will employ text mining analysis to analyse data collected from these sources. Extracted data will be analysed separately by area to show variation in levels of public trust in local police forces. The research is interested in understanding what relationships exist, if any, between the effectiveness of policing and levels of public trust in policing.