The project team are delighted to announce the publication of its report of findings which you can download by clicking on the link.
We would like to thank our community for participating in this research and will announce our next steps shortly. In the meantime, please feel free to contact Professor Chamberlain if you have any questions or would like to share your views.
Wellcome, this blog is run by Professor Marty Chamberlain and academic colleagues affiliated with the Centre for Social Innovation at Teesside University.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to the implementation of new legislation, the Coronavirus Act 2020, which gives police officers the powers to enforce social distancing guidelines imposed by the government.
These are unprecedented times and have called for unprecedented action to keep everyone safe, however during this period it is important that the Police continue to undertake their duties by consent, and deal with local communities sensitively at a period when many will be feeling particularly isolated and vulnerable.
As a result, we have agreed to undertake independent research with the support of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland.
The research has two key goals:
To understand community perceptions regarding Cleveland Police implementation of the Coronavirus Act powers.
The University will be an independent player acting to advise the PPC on public perceptions regarding Cleveland Police use of covid powers to ascertain whether the community, and in particular ‘at risk’ groups, feel that the new powers are being used appropriately with the desired focus on engagement, education and encouragement before resorting to enforcement. This will include engagement to understand how communities would like the Police and PCC to educate them regarding the new powers.
To understand how the community would like Cleveland Police and the PCC to engage with them during the period of social distancing when traditional face to face engagement mechanisms are not appropriate.
This will potentially include recommendations regarding future engagement mechanisms to better reflect the diverse range of platforms available for engagement, and will potentially have longer term implications for the format of community engagement, going beyond the timescales of the pandemic. Research will be undertaken to look at best practice regarding community engagement in other Force areas, including a review of the benefits of a range of social media platforms.
We have now moved from collecting and analysing our survey data, to drafting our report to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland. Thank you so much to everybody in our community who took part – we really appreciate people taking the time to do so. Without them, we could not have achieved so much.
We will publish a copy of the report for general public consumption in both Microsoft word and Acrobat pdf formats, on this blog. At present, we hope the report will be available by the end of July 2020.
Finally, we are still analysing additional social media data and some qualitative interviews with key public stakeholders, with a view to writing a disciplinary-focused criminological academic paper for peer review. We will also make a copy of this article available on this blog. This should happen later in the year once we have fully digested the implications of our research. Probably from around November onwards.
The College of Policing has placed us on its research map in support of promoting the profile of our project.
For enquiries regarding the project please email Professor Chamberlain at: opccproject@tees.ac.uk
We want to know what our local communities around think about policing during the Covid19 crisis. You can contact us to share your views or arrange a telephone interview with one of our team at communitymailbox@tees.ac.uk
Policing Covid Project 