EMPAC offers specialist additional capability for proactive and strategic development, by working collaboratively with any academic researchers on priority policing challenges of today, with an aim to get tomorrow’s policing more upstream. EMPAC has been chosen to be represented in a new book edited by Professors Steven Tong (Kingston University) and Denise Martin (Abertay University and Associate Director for the Scottish Institute for Policing Research – SIPR). The new 2023 book An Introduction to Police Research, published by Routledge, features a chapter all about EMPAC, concerning its best practice in forging police academic partnerships.
The importance of working together on priority industrial challenges using co-problematisation and co-production (rather than just being led by theoretical or random academic interests) also balances proactive exploratory research and moves beyond simply testing efficacy linked to historical criminal patterns. In other words, EMPAC is a police-academic collaboration (rather than the other way around) which unashamedly focuses first and foremost on improving the policing of tomorrow by driving applied, high impact research. That means, in practice, EMPAC proactively works with any researcher, anywhere, who can offer additionality, whilst always ensuring all the research it works with is grounded in an operational professional policing contextualisation.
EMPAC’s story – so far
EMPAC has now been emulated by an all Wales collaboration, (All-Wales Policing Academic Collaboration – AWPAC) and, supported by the Police Knowledge Fund in 2015, has been arguably the country’s most successful police academic collaboration, which is a tribute to the lineage of visionary leadership from ACC Phil Kay (Leicestershire Police), Peter Ward, Superintendent Dave Hill (Northamptonshire Police), PCC Hardyal Dhindsa (Derbyshire Constabulary) and DCCs Craig Naylor (Lincolnshire Police) and Chief Constable Paul Gibson.
EMPAC’s local start, inspired by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR), was boosted by winning a competitive bid under the £10 million national Police Knowledge Fund, funded jointly by the Home Office and the Higher Education Funding Council (latterly UKRI). EMPAC was one of 14 Home Office supported collaborations, amongst University College London, Cambridge, Open University, Portsmouth and Birmingham – yet EMPAC produced the most outputs of any nationally – you can read about the College of Policing review here:-
https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2022-3/Police%20knowledge%20fund%20full%20review.pdf
The lessons learned from EMPAC’s experience offer a route map for future collaborations, to ensure policing priorities drive proactive enquiry, and findings are targeted towards real-world impact.
EMPAC remains a resource to connect researchers and practitioners and undertake bespoke research – recent research has included involving communities in police training, police bursaries, violence reduction, reducing reoffending, optimising performance and police funding formulas. EMPAC’s work is agreed by the chief constables of the region according to their identified policing priorities.
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