What works in delivering police reform

Sarah Jones was appointed as Minister of State at the Home Office on 6 September 2025. She was previously Minister of State at both the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade from 8 July 2024 to 6 September 2025. She was elected as the MP for Croydon West, formerly Croydon Central, in June 2017.

Jason Hogg is the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, with responsibility for all aspects of operational policing across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, serving a population of more than 2.5 million people. Nationally, Jason is the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Chair of the Workforce Co-ordination Committee, overseeing key portfolios including leadership, wellbeing, future workforce planning, professional standards and ethics, pay and reward, pensions, and inclusion and culture. He is also the NPCC lead for Drugs and for Detective Resilience and Wellbeing. On behalf of policing across the South East region, Jason has responsibility for the delivery of Counter Terrorism Policing and the Regional Organised Crime Unit. In addition, he serves as a member of the National Police Air Support Board, which provides strategic oversight of air support services for police forces across the United Kingdom. Jason joined policing after completing a BA (Hons) degree in Theology at the University of Oxford. His decision to pursue a policing career was influenced by two Thames Valley Police officers whom he met while volunteering at a homeless centre during his studies. He began his policing career with Cleveland Police in 1995 and has also served with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary. The majority of his service has been within criminal investigation, where he has held detective roles at every rank. During his career, he has undertaken extended secondments with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), including overseas work in Iraq.

Professor David Phoenix is Vice-Chancellor of The Open University prior to which he was Vice Chancellor of London South Bank University (LSBU) and Chief Executive of the LSBU Group. He has been a Board member of sector wide bodies such as Universities UK where he was the funding policy lead and the National Centre for Universities and Business. He was appointed by the Prime Minister to the Board of the Science Museum Group where he served as Vice Chair. In addition to research papers, edited collections and research monographs he has provided thought leadership on tertiary education and was a Commissioner for Labours’ Life Long Learning Commission. He was elected to Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College. His research into soft matter is muti-disciplinary and has focused on the biomedical potential of amphiphilic molecules leading to the award of a higher doctorate (DSc) by Liverpool University. He has held Visiting Chairs in Russia, China and the UK, including Kings College London, and was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering He holds a number of Honorary degrees and has been awarded Fellowships by the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), The Institution of Engineering and Technology, The Royal Society of Chemistry, The Royal Society of Biology, The Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications and the Royal Society of Medicine. He was awarded an OBE for his work on science and higher education and is a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London

Dr Andrew Wooff is Professor of Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University. His research has focused on police custody, police education, rural policing and the intersection between health and the police. Hee has published widely on these topics. Andrew is the Director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR), a research consortium of 13 Scottish universities, Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority. The mission of SIPR is to support independent, multi-disciplinary policing research to enable evidence informed policy & practice and decision making.

Rob is Professor of Organizational Psychology at Queen Mary, University of London and Associate Research Director CRF. He is also currently a Visiting Professor of Evidence-Based HRM at Birkbeck (University of London) and Professor at Oslo Nye Høyskole. He was previously co-founder and Scientific Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Management and has held positions at the Institute for Employment Studies, London School of Economics, Kings’s College (University of London), Bath University and University of Edinburgh.

Professor Tom Kirchmaier is Director of the Policing and Crime research group focusing on understanding the full spectrum of questions relating to policing and crime, with a special focus on Police Organizational Efficiency, Demand Prediction, Financial and Organised Crime, Domestic Abuse, as well as Serious Violence. He works with very large datasets from the police and beyond, and is currently working actively to include the possibilities of the new AI methods in his research. Prior to the CEP, Tom was with the Financial Markets Group of the LSE, and the Manchester and Copenhagen Business Schools. Tom holds a PhD from the LSE (CEP). Current areas of research include: Economics of Crime and Policing: 'Police Productivity' - in part using AI methods; Domestic Abuse; AML, Fraud, and Organised Crime; Crowd Management; Non-discriminatory Algorithms; Serious Violence; Crime Networks. Other: Working from Home (WFH); Compliance (AML); Bank Stability and Shareholder Insulation.

Professor Paul Taylor became the first Police Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) on 1 May 2021, with a remit to connect science and technology expertise both in the UK and globally to keep policing at the forefront of best practice. As CSA, Paul led the development of policing’s first science and technology strategy, implemented the collaborative science system that connects forces, industry and academia, and helped secure over £400m of additional investment into innovation. Paul is Professor of Psychology at Lancaster University. Prior to this role, he founded the UK Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST). Established in 2015, CREST has brought together over 140 researchers from 35 universities and SMEs to deliver research that informs policy and practice in security and policing.

Katy joined Thames Valley Police in 2000 having studied Sociology at the London School of Economics. She worked in a variety of role and ranks including uniform patrol, CID, neighbourhood policing, child abuse investigation, surveillance and strategic development. In April 2023 Katy was promoted to Assistant Chief Constable for Crime and Criminal Justice, with force wide responsibility for Crime, Intelligence, Public Protection, Criminal Justice and Forensics. She also led Thames Valley Police’s response to Violence Against Women and Girls. In November 2024 Katy took up the position of Deputy Chief Constable at Gloucestershire Constabulary. Katy is also the NPCC lead for Investigations. Katy completed her Masters in Police Leadership and Management at Warwick Business School in 2015. She has a keen academic interest in domestic abuse, and published an academic journal article on domestic abuse attrition rates 1 following her Masters research, and a book chapter on domestic abuse in ‘An Introduction to Professional Policing’ 2. She has also written a book with colleagues titled Policing Domestic Abuse – Risk, Policy & Practice published by Routledge in November 2022. Katy continues to work academically in this field, now focussing on Teenage Relationship Abuse and adolescent domestic abuse in a research partnership with the VISION consortium at City University, London where she is an Honorary Research Fellow and Practitioner in Residence. More on her work in this field can be found in this policy brief: Addressing abuse in teenage relationships - City Vision and this journal article: Adolescent Domestic Abuse and Its Consequences: A Rapid Systematic Review | Journal of Family Violence. In January 2026, Katy became a Trustee for a new charity called ‘It Does Matter’ which focuses on supporting victims to report Non Contact Sexual Offences. Katy instigated the ‘TVP Journal’ which is a fantastic gateway to recognise the academic work of officers and staff. Following the success of the TVP Journal Katy was asked to be the Editor in Chief of the College of Policing Publication ‘Going Equipped’ 3. In 2024 Katy was the runner up in the World Policing Summit awards in Dubai in the category of Inspirational Female Police Officer.

I have two versions of a Bio, depending on your preference/requirement for length: Chief Inspector Tom Perry is a West Yorkshire Police leader with 18 years’ policing experience across Thames Valley Police and West Yorkshire Police. His career has spanned patrol, crime, contact management, neighbourhood policing and operational command, including work as a Detective Constable and Tactical Firearms Commander. Tom has led and supported several evidence-led change programmes, including West Yorkshire Police’s Contact Review, the Victims’ Journey Review, Post-Call Analysis AI and Trauma Tracker. His work centres on turning operational data and frontline experience into practical improvements for victims, staff and the wider public. He is the lead for Trauma Tracker, a Police STAR Fund project that applies research, secure digital design and structured supervision to identify traumatic exposure among officers and staff. By using trusted data to prompt early wellbeing intervention and provide aggregated organisational insight, Trauma Tracker supports ethical leadership, workforce resilience and evidence-led policing practice. Tom has a particular interest in artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and how policing can use evidence responsibly to improve decision-making, public service and organisational learning. ******* Chief Inspector Tom Perry has 18 years’ policing experience across two of the largest police forces in England. He began his career with Thames Valley Police, working across uniformed patrol and crime roles, qualifying as a Detective Constable with experience in volume crime, drugs and organised crime. He later served as a Patrol Sergeant before moving into Force Control Room operations, where he qualified as a Pursuit Commander. Tom transferred to West Yorkshire Police in 2017 and has since held a range of operational and strategic leadership roles across Leeds District and Operational Support. His experience includes patrol leadership, neighbourhood policing, contact management and district operations. As the policing lead for the Leeds On-Street Sex Working Partnership, Tom worked with partners to improve safety and support for some of the most vulnerable women in the city. Tom is currently a Chief Inspector in Contact Management within West Yorkshire Police. He has led and contributed to a range of evidence-led improvement programmes, including West Yorkshire Police’s Contact Review, the Victims’ Journey Review, Trauma Tracker and the development of Post-Call Analysis AI. His work focuses on using data, operational insight, research and technology to improve decision-making, workforce wellbeing, service quality and outcomes for victims. Tom is the project lead for Trauma Tracker, a Police STAR Fund initiative supported by the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser. Trauma Tracker uses policing data, the Police Traumatic Events Checklist and secure analytics to identify acute and cumulative exposure to traumatic incidents, prompting early supervisor-led wellbeing interventions and providing leaders with aggregated insight into trends, risks and support needs. The project has demonstrated positive supervisory engagement, improved trauma-informed conversations and a more proactive, evidence-led approach to workforce wellbeing. Tom also has a strong interest in artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and the practical application of evidence-based policing. His recent work explores how emerging technologies can support better contact management, improve the victim experience, strengthen organisational learning and help policing make more consistent, ethical and informed decisions.

Brian began his policing career with Lancashire Police in 1995 before transferring to West Yorkshire Police in 2001. With the majority of his service spent on the frontline, he has built extensive operational experience, particularly in Armed Response and Roads Policing roles. This operational background continues to shape his practical, officer‑focused approach to leadership and representation. Driven by a strong belief in fairness, integrity, and effective support for officers, Brian became actively involved with the Police Federation in 2014. He was elected Branch Chair of the West Yorkshire Police Federation in 2018, working closely with members to strengthen representation and engagement at a local level. In 2022, he joined the National Board and, from 2024, supported the National Chair through his work in the National Chair’s office, contributing to national strategy, policy development, and advocacy. In his national role, Brian leads on Parliamentary engagement, working closely with Members of Parliament and Government stakeholders to ensure police officers’ voices are heard at the highest levels. He is committed to securing meaningful dialogue, influencing policy, and delivering the very best representation for officers on issues that directly impact their working lives, welfare, and safety. Alongside his policing and representative responsibilities, Brian holds a master’s degree in Police Leadership, reflecting his commitment to continuous professional development and effective leadership within modern policing. Beyond the service, he volunteers with a local management company and serves as a director of Blueline Health, reinforcing his long‑standing focus on officer wellbeing and support. Brian is a passionate advocate for policing and is particularly committed to highlighting the positive work carried out by officers every day. He works to promote balanced, constructive public discourse and to ensure the professionalism, dedication, and impact of policing is accurately represented in the media and wider public debate. In July 2025, Brian was elected Deputy National Chair, continuing his dedication to serving and representing colleagues at a national level.

Dr Matt Ashby is an associate professor at the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at University College London. His research focuses on crime analysis, how crime concentrates in time and space, and how police can use data to solve crime and disorder problems. Dr Ashby’s research has been funded by the College of Policing, UK Home Office and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is a former police officer and has a PhD in crime science from UCL, as well as being a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He teaches crime mapping and data analysis, as well as running applied training courses on crime analysis and problem solving for police officers and staff.

Dr Arun Sondhi is a Senior Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, an Associate Professor at Leeds Trinity University, and a Partner at Therapeutic Solutions (Addictions) Ltd. His work applies data and evaluation methods to policing, criminal justice, addiction recovery, and public health systems, with particular expertise in causal inference to assess intervention effects in real-world settings. His recent work includes studies of recovery housing and criminal justice interventions in the United States, as well as emerging work in problem-solving court contexts, such as drug courts, examining how different interventions shape trajectories of recovery, retention, and reoffending over time. His work within Operation Soteria has involved analysing Health and Wellbeing survey data from officers working in rape and serious sexual offence (RASSO) investigations, examining patterns of workload, stress, and organisational conditions. Recent ESRC-funded research has used hierarchical clustering to identify distinct segments within the investigator workforce, alongside mediation and moderation analyses to explore the mechanisms through which occupational stressors may contribute to burnout.

Professor Emma Williams joined Anglia Ruskin University in 2024 after serving as Academic Director at The Policing Centre for Research and Learning at the Open University. Her career includes roles at the Metropolitan Police, Ministry of Justice, and Canterbury Christ Church University. She has led significant research on policing, particularly in investigating rape, organisational justice, professionalisation and public service personnel wellbeing. Emma was the Pillar 4 lead for the Home Office funded Operation Soteria which explored rape investigations and Project Bright Light which applied the same methodology to the policing response to domestic abuse.

Chief Inspector Colin Clarkson works within the Strategic Development Department at Lincolnshire Police, where he leads work to improve the force’s understanding of current and future demand, and capacity requirements. His responsibilities include delivering an annual strategic planning cycle that anticipates changes in the operating environment, aligns resources to demand profiles, and considers both the volume and complexity of policing demand. A key aspect of his role is the analysis of large and complex datasets to generate insight that supports operational efficiency, evidence-based decision-making, and long-term workforce planning. He also collaborates with several universities on research projects aimed at enhancing the use of data and analytics within policing. He is a member of the force’s Evidence-Based Policing Group, which is responsible for maintaining and strengthening academic partnerships, promoting research-informed practice, and embedding evidence-based approaches across the organisation. Alongside his professional responsibilities, he is undertaking a PhD focused on the analysis of large policing datasets containing multiple variables. His research uses the Cambridge Crime Harm Index to identify patterns of behaviour associated with future offending and victimisation, with the aim of improving the ability of policing to predict and prevent harm.

Dr Joshua Skoczylis is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Lincoln, where his research spans counterterrorism policy, online radicalisation, and applied police analytics. He leads an active research partnership with Lincolnshire Police, applying machine learning methods — including demand forecasting and crime complexity modelling — to operational capacity challenges. He also directs Lewis & Klein Associates, a policing and security research consultancy. His work sits at the intersection of policy analysis and quantitative methods, with a focus on translating analytical insight into practical policing applications.

Dr Ruth Weir is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow in Criminology at the Violence and Society Centre, City St George's, University of London. Within the UKPRP-funded VISION consortium, she leads research on teenage relationship abuse, neighbourhoods and policing, drawing on interdisciplinary expertise across Criminology and Geography. In 2024, with DCC Katy Barrow-Grint, she co-founded the National Working Group on Teenage Relationship Abuse, which has grown to over 120 members spanning policing, government, health, academia and the voluntary sector -including the Home Office, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner's Office, the Department for Education, NHS bodies, SafeLives and Victim Support. The group is shaping how teenage relationship abuse is defined, recognised and responded to in the UK, particularly for those under 16 who fall outside the statutory definition in the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act. With DCC Barrow-Grint, Ruth also co-leads a Police STAR Fund project, working with SafeLives, Gloucestershire Constabulary, Gloucestershire's Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, and colleagues at Essex and Cambridge, to review a decade of data on teenage relationship abuse and develop the evidence base for a new risk assessment framework for use across safeguarding agencies. Before academia, Ruth held policy, research and intelligence roles in local government and the Home Office.

Will Lyne is an experienced and internationally respected leader in the field of serious and organised crime. Currently the Head of Economic and Cybercrime at the Metropolitan Police, Will leads the Commands that protect Londoners from threats such as fraud and ransomware. Will has worked in law enforcement since joining the UK National Crime Agency as a trainee investigator in 2010. From 2011 to 2013, Will worked in Afghanistan delivering investigations with local, military and international partners, before joining the National Cyber Crime Unit in 2013. From 2016 to 2020, Will led the NCA’s liaison team and online crime engagement with the FBI based in Washington D.C., USA. Will has led numerous high-profile investigations covering money laundering, fraud, kidnap & extortion and cyber offending. This includes multiple disruptions of the world’s most harmful cybercrime group, EvilCorp, and leading Op Destabilise, the UK’s largest economic crime investigation that dismantled a multi-billion global Russian illicit finance network. Will has also led the development of pioneering artificial intelligence capabilities within the NCA, contributing to the related NPCC national standards. A 2008 graduate of University College London and a 2018 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Will graduated from the College of Policing Executive Leadership Programme in 2025. Alongside his role, Will is studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, with a thesis focused on online threats.

In 1990, David Jackson joined Nottinghamshire Police in the United Kingdom as a member of police staff, stepping into a world that would come to define him: the Control Room, where the public's worst moments arrive as a voice on a line and must be turned, in seconds, into action. Over the following three decades he built a career on exactly that pressure, rising through every rank and grade within Police Control Rooms and Public Contact until his name became synonymous with the discipline itself. He would go on to lead one of the largest and busiest operations of its kind in Europe. As the officer responsible for the Metropolitan Police's Contact, Command and Control service, David oversaw the processing of more than six million emergency and non-emergency contacts each year, and the coordination of police response to over 1.6 million incidents from the spontaneous to the global pre-planned events of Notting Hill Carnival and London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. Behind those figures stood a workforce of more than 1,700 people across three purpose-built facilities, operating on an annual budget of £91 million, a command measured not in offices or titles but in the split-second decisions of call handlers and dispatchers whose accuracy, day after day, determines outcomes for people at their most vulnerable. David's expertise extended far beyond London. In 2004, he supported Thai and Sri Lankan authorities coordinating specialists in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. He later worked with Interpol to help build a global response capability for mass casualty incidents, and in 2007 contributed to security planning for the Cricket World Cup across the Caribbean. The high point of this international dimension came in 2012, when he led the UK police contingent of the International Liaison team during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, hosting the safety and security experts of visiting nations at a moment when the world's attention had converged on a single city. David concluded his warranted service in 2022, retiring as a Chief Superintendent with the Metropolitan Police. Yet his contribution continues: through the National Police Chiefs' Council, he now leads nationally on data, analytics, and AI opportunities in police contact, and supports the Response Policing Portfolio in advancing the national understanding of response performance. From a control room in Nottinghamshire to tsunami relief coordination, from Olympic security diplomacy to the frontier of AI in emergency response, David Jackson's career reflects a single conviction: that the moment someone reaches out to the police deserves to be met with competence, care, and constant improvement. David has spent over thirty years making sure it is.