Welcome to AI week – a week of focus on AI

Continuing our final webinar on AI, our third presentation is from Andy Higgins, Research Director, The Police Foundation explores the implications, opportunities, and risks of technology in policing and its impact on public confidence.

He highlights the changing relationship between the public and the police, as well as the radical shift in how society interacts with technology. He also shows the importance of procedural justice in shaping public perceptions and attitudes towards the police is emphasized.

The presentation also discusses the potential benefits of remote police response options, the role of technology in eliciting information and improving access, and the risks of removing the human element in virtual contexts. The concept of failure demand and the need for attentive, responsive citizen-focused services are also addressed.

Takeaways

• The changing relationship between the public and the police, along with the radical shift in how society interacts with technology, has implications for policing and public confidence.
• Procedural justice, which includes fair process, attentiveness, and respect, is a key factor in shaping public perceptions and attitudes towards the police.
• Remote police response options can improve efficiency, reduce victim anxiety, and enhance satisfaction, trust, and confidence.
• Technology can elicit information and enable better responses to vulnerable victims and hidden harm, but high-quality police response is crucial for building trust and confidence.
• The removal of the human element in virtual contexts raises questions about procedural justice and the potential impact on public confidence.
• Addressing failure demand and reinvesting capacity into attentive, responsive citizen-focused services can improve public confidence in policing.

Sound Bites

• “Rather than wait for our kind of business as usual police attendance, which could take some time, in appropriate circumstances, callers to the police can have an immediate connection to a police officer by video or sometimes by telephone.”
• “The new, especially text-based contact channels are eliciting information, crime reports, disclosure from the public, including around high harm issues that would never otherwise have come to police attention.”
• “In some kind of virtual context, like online crime reporting, AI chat, where the human agent on the police side is either completely or significantly abstracted and put at a distance, this seems to raise some fairly fundamental questions from a procedural justice point of view.”

Chapters
00:00 – The Changing Relationship Between the Public and the Police
02:07 – The Impact of Technology on Policing and Public Confidence
03:02 – The Role of Procedural Justice in Shaping Public Perceptions
05:30 – Remote Police Response: Improving Efficiency and Building Trust
07:30 – Technology as a Tool for Eliciting Information and Enhancing Access
09:18 – The Risks of Removing the Human Element in Virtual Contexts
12:00 – Addressing Failure Demand and Reinvesting Capacity for Public Confidence

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