Policing Network

The Policing Network is a partnership between the University of Lincoln and Lincolnshire Police. It was launched in September 2021, with this blog post concentrating on an away day in April 2022 and a subsequent Dragon’s Den event in October 2022.

To date the Network hosts four research groups. These groups meet regularly and work together identifying issues which are being faced by Lincolnshire police with a view to working together in an attempt to conduct research which may help to solve them. In addition to research projects, the groups also work collaboratively on funding applications. Each group has an academic and also a practitioner lead.

The four groups are currently focused on:

  1. Health and Wellbeing
  2. Communities
  3. Digital Policing
  4. Reducing reoffending and mental health.

To aid with this collaboration, the Network received funding from the QR Policy Support Fund to put on a research away day in April 2022. This was held at the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln and provided Network members with the opportunity to meet face-to-face for the whole day.

Away Day

The away day was held on 4th April and brought together 40 academics and practitioners from Lincolnshire Police. In the morning we had a presentation from John Coxhead from EMPAC (The East Midlands Policing Academic Collaboration) who spoke to the group about national and regional policing priorities. Chris Davison (Assistant Chief Constable Lincolnshire Police) then spoke about local policing priorities.

Chris also announced a ‘Dragon’s Den’ event where Network members could bid for research funding.

Colleagues then split into their research groups and were asked to think about which of the aforementioned policing priorities they were going to work on. Each group was asked to identify two priority areas, relevant to their research expertise and from that groups sub divided to form bidding groups.

At the away day there were several ideas across the four groups with the afternoon spent on developing six projects.

Dragon’s Den Event

The Dragon’s den event was held on 5th October at Police Headquarters in Nettleham, with the event and the monies sort funded by Lincolnshire Police and the Police and Crime Commissioner in Lincolnshire.

Three projects made bids to the Dragons, of which two were successful:

  1. Learning from the experiences of young people within Integrated Offender Management
  2. Automating Policing Functions

Further details on these projects can be found in the attached policy brief.

More information:

Contact Karen Harrison (Policing Network Lead) for more details.