Tackling organised crime through a partnership approach: a process evaluation.

Background In 2010 the Home Office set up an initiative to engage Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) across England and Wales in exploring how local partnership working could be used to more effectively tackle organised crime. This report presents the main findings from a process evaluation undertaken of the 12 pilot sites included in this initiative

The ‘appropriate adult’: what they do and what they should do in police interviews with mentally disordered suspects

Background: In almost all countries worldwide, the first point of contact with the criminal justice system is with the police. A large proportion of these individuals may have vulnerabilities, such as mental health difficulties. Given the complexities associated with vulnerable suspects, such interviews may be compromised, which could lead to a miscarriage of justice. In England and Wales, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and its accompanying Codes of Practice lay down requirements for interviewing vulnerable suspects and provide for attendance of ‘appropriate adults’ to support communication between police and the vulnerable suspect. To date, however, their role has been under-researched. Aims/Hypotheses: To explore the role of appropriate adults in police interviews and test the hypotheses first that appropriate adults more commonly remain passive during interview than expected from guidance and, secondly, that any interventions are more likely than not to follow examples in current guidance. Methods: Transcripts of police interviews conducted with suspects with possible mental disorder and an appropriate adult present (N = 27) were analysed using a specially developed coding framework. Results: Appropriate adults were significantly more likely to remain passive than to intervene, even when current guidance would suggest intervention. When they did intervene, however, such interventions were significantly more likely than not to follow from guidance and the vulnerable suspect’s needs. Conclusions/Implications for practice: In our sample, appropriate adults were not fulfilling their role as outlined in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and accompanying Codes of Practice, specifically, they appeared to know what to do but not when to do it. There is a heightened risk of a miscarriage of justice in such circumstances without improvements

Police Strategies and Suspect Responses in Real-Life Serious Crime Interviews

This research focuses exclusively on real-life taped interviews with serious crime suspects and examines the strategies used and types of questions asked by police, and suspects’ responses to these. The information source was audio-tape-recorded interviews with 56 suspects. These recordings were obtained from 11 police services across England and Wales and were analysed using a specially designed coding frame. It was found that interviewers employed a range of strategies with presentation of evidence and challenge the most frequently observed. Closed questions were by far the most frequently used, and open questions, although less frequent, were found to occur more during the opening phases of the interviews. The frequency of ineffective question types (e.g. negative, repetitive, multiple) was low. A number of significant associations were observed between interviewer strategies and suspect responses. Rapport/empathy and open-type questions were associated with an increased likelihood of suspects admitting the offence whilst describing trauma, and negative questions were associated with a decreased likelihood