About us

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“We have worked with Professor Roach and his team on quite a few crime and policing related projects over the last 5 years or so, including reducing burglary, reducing thefts from motor vehicles, and developing messages on police cell walls for arrestees. I feel that Professor Roach brings a different way of looking at crime and policing problems, which usually results in us adopting approaches and methods that we have never tried or even thought about trying before.” (Detective Superintendent Kevin Weir, Durham Police).

The Applied Criminology and Policing Centre (ACPC) comprises members with expertise in many areas relevant to both understanding and responding to issues and problems associated with crime and policing. Currently, ACPC members are engaged in research, consultancy, teaching and training on projects in areas including; criminal investigation, Evidence-Based Policing, designing out crime, preventing crime and antisocial behaviour, counter- terrorism, violent extremism and hate crime, Self-Selection Policing, Nudge psychology, sex offending, youth crime and wildlife crime. Please see ‘Impact’ for more detailed information on our work in some of these areas.

We adopt a broad approach to researching these topics which concerns not just criminality and policing, but also victimisation, perceptions of crime and safety, and public security.

We strive to ensure that our research, consultancy, teaching and training activity is contemporary and relevant to police, policy makers and allied criminal justice partners, in ‘real-world’ contexts, whilst maintaining the highest academic quality and rigour.

Within the Applied Criminology and Policing Centre we strive to ensure our activity is relevant to practice and applicable to ‘real world’ settings as well as being of the highest academic quality. We aim to achieve this by:

  • Conducting academic, practice-relevant and multidisciplinary research on crime and the policy, social and environmental contexts in which it occurs
  • Promoting the transfer of knowledge to practitioners and agencies responsible for reducing crime
  • Developing international links in academia and practice
  • Communicating with academic audiences, practitioners, agencies and policy makers through publications, conference presentations and training
  • Nurturing the next generation of researchers, analysts and problem solvers by supporting a strong PhD student community

Our current contractors include; the UK Home Office, UK Security Services, UK Police Forces, Police and Crime Commissioners, local councils, Community Safety Partnerships, Fire and Emergency Services, Children’s Services, Youth Offending Teams, and other UK Community and criminal Justice agencies. Some of our most recent contracted work includes research, consultancy, and project evaluations for agencies and bodies such as; Police Service Northern Ireland, West Yorkshire, Durham and West Midlands Police, Kirklees and Bradford Community Safety Partnerships, the Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire, and Kirklees Youth Offending Team. In recent years we have worked with more than twenty UK police Forces.

Our findings are disseminated through academic publications, public presentations (i.e. conferences) and through regular contributions to local, national and international media.