Policing Academic Centre of Excellence

Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is recognised internationally for having real world impact at the intersection of environmental sustainability, economics and civic security. We wish to formalise this through recognition as a Policing-Academic Centre of Excellence (P-ACE). As identified by the Home Secretary (19/11/24) crime is ‘evolving at breakneck speed’. Significant challenges include violence against women and girls (VAWG), knife crime, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and shop theft. Current ‘data and intelligence sharing is slow’ and she called for ‘teams embedded in local communities who know what is going on’ and the ‘restoration of neighbourhood policing’. The NTU P-ACE supports this mission of ‘reducing harm, rebuilding confidence’ and brings together our policing, industrial and community partners with our existing robust research, data analysis and evidence. The P-ACE is supported though a seven-year research infrastructure prioritising institutional level interdisciplinary research encompassing safety, security and sustainability. We will work with partners to translate these research findings into actionable, transferable and sustainable policy intervention.
NTU has been at the forefront of police-academic partnerships for over a decade. It was integral to the East Midlands Police and Academic Collaboration (EMPAC, 2015-2022). NTU have established collaborations with Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Essex, Devon and Cornwall Police, and South Wales Police. The P-ACE will address four police areas of research interest (ARIs) where NTU are established leaders; crime prevention, public trust and transparency, climate change and sustainability, and surveillance and sensing.
The NTU P-ACE will sit in a wider ecosystem of security work. Our research has impacted on crime prevention approaches to reduce residential burglary, anti-social behaviour, VAWG and shoplifting. Our recognised work on hate crime, equality and marginalisation was awarded the Times Higher Award (THE) for outstanding contribution to a community and is essential for building public trust and confidence. NTU is ranked as the second most sustainable university in the world in (UI GreenMetric Rankings). We have an embedded chief scientist for the Climate Security National Foresight Group who supports the NPCC adverse weather portfolio. Staff at NTU developed HALO technology; internationally patented x-ray techniques used at international airports which received a Queens Anniversary Prize for safety and security of citizens.
The priority aims of the NTU P-ACE which align to the police ARIs are to:

foster and build on our existing collaborations with police, industry and community partners, and.
stimulate these partnerships to develop sustainable, evidence informed approaches to advance the effectiveness and  of UK policing.

This will be achieved through seven objectives:

To develop a shared vision of partnership across all P-ACE partners.
To consolidate existing partnerships, and work with other P-ACEs to improve connections between researchers, industry, and policing.
To embrace interdisciplinary perspectives on policing challenges, and to quantify the economic, social scientific and technical benefits of these approaches.
To support world leading co-produced research between police partners and academics at all stages of their career.
To enhance the quality and scale of policing research, establish fast track knowledge mobilisation pipelines, support open access research, and make it easier for users of research to identify best practice.
To ensure high quality and data driver research evidence underpins the professional development and training of current and future policing professionals.
To ensure NTUs internationally recognised approaches to sustainability are transferred to the P-ACE partnerships to embed sustainability and future resilience into future police ARIs.