Citizen Forensics
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Sci, Tech, Eng & Maths (STEM)
Abstract
This project reframes key challenges that underlie modern policing in a socio-technical world; a world instrumented with mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies, in which many citizens and communities live, work and play, but which must also manage threats to their wellbeing and their rights. The project aims to support a new engagement between authorities (such as the police) and communities of citizens in order to better investigate (and in the long term reduce) potential or actual threats to citizen security, safety, and privacy. This includes both empowering the police by opening up new ways of citizens providing data in ways that protect privacy and anonymity, and empowering citizens by using these new technologies to also hold the police to account. We will be harnessing many of the so-called Internet of Things, Smart City and Smart Home technologies to encourage and allow citizens to help the police collect and analyse disparate data to improve public safety at both local and ultimately national levels.
The project will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on the disciplines of software engineering for ubiquitous systems, social and cognitive psychology, and digital forensics / policing.
The project will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on the disciplines of software engineering for ubiquitous systems, social and cognitive psychology, and digital forensics / policing.
Planned Impact
Engagement and impact in the proposed project are a substantive thread running through each work package and will span a range of disciplines. These include some of the more applied disciplines such as policing and digital forensics, as well as traditional disciplines such as social and cognitive psychology, adaptive systems, software engineering and human-computer interaction.
We will utilise traditional channels, such as journals, conferences and workshops for achieving academic impact. Our non-academic impact is distinctive in its focus to achieve high public impact. We will engage ordinary citizens, community groups, and the police in order to harness underutilised resources in the community to empower stakeholders to make communities safer, improve police efficiency, and to hold the police to account. We expect our impact to be measured by increased community safety perceptions, improved crime detection and conviction rates, and fewer complaints against the police.
We will utilise traditional channels, such as journals, conferences and workshops for achieving academic impact. Our non-academic impact is distinctive in its focus to achieve high public impact. We will engage ordinary citizens, community groups, and the police in order to harness underutilised resources in the community to empower stakeholders to make communities safer, improve police efficiency, and to hold the police to account. We expect our impact to be measured by increased community safety perceptions, improved crime detection and conviction rates, and fewer complaints against the police.
Publications
Levine M
(2019)
Rethinking the Bystander Effect in Violence Reduction Training Programs
in Social Issues and Policy Review
Yu Y
(2019)
LiveBox: A Self-Adaptive Forensic-Ready Service for Drones
in IEEE Access
Zhang M
(2020)
Designing Technologies for Community Policing
Georgiou T
(2020)
Rhythmic Haptic Cueing Using Wearable Devices as Physiotherapy for Huntington Disease: Case Study.
in JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologies
Zhang M
(2020)
Finding & Reviewing Community Policing Apps in Asia
Elphick C
(2021)
Building trust in digital policing: a scoping review of community policing apps
in Police Practice and Research
Elphick C
(2021)
Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups.
in Frontiers in psychology
| Description | The Citizen Forensics project (https://www.citizenforensics.org) explores how digital technologies impact on (and have the potential to enhance) citizen-police collaboration. Based on our review of the literature on citizen science and community policing, the result of which is a taxonomy for Citizen Forensics that specifies four levels of engagement between citizens and the police. The four levels of the Citizen Forensics taxonomy range from 'Crowdsourcing' of information at Level 1 to 'Self-investigation' at Level 4 and as we move up the levels of Citizen Forensics, there is a need for more specialized skills and training. In order to understand how this taxonomy relates to current practice in citizen-police engagement, we undertook two studies: (1) a stakeholder study involving interviews and focus groups with neighbourhood policing teams and members of the community. This study has been supported by Merseyside Police and Thames Valley Police (Milton Keynes) and led to a rich understanding of the socio-technical aspects of the citizen-police interactions (https://oro.open.ac.uk/92558/). (2) a technology review where we have identified a set of mobile apps used for citizen-police engagement, which are being analysed to understand their functionality, privacy features and usability. was published in the Journal of Police Practice and Research (https://oro.open.ac.uk/74072/). This work was was supported by policing practitioners from Thames Valley Police (Milton Keynes) and presented at a Centre for Policing Research & Learning (CPRL) Membership meeting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKrOEfUGdiE), attended by representatives of 23 UK police forces, where there was interest in the design considerations proposed as a result of this study and the details of the mobile apps we identified. Additionally, we have also developed a platform, FriendFace, for conducting a study of the impact of social media use on eyewitness memory, which also includes a survey on how people use social media to engage with the police. The results of this work (https://oro.open.ac.uk/75649/) were shared at the CPRL 'Festival of Impact' with representatives of UK police forces, highlighting how the use of social-media to self-investigate incidents can affect the reliability of eyewitness identification. We have also conducted a study to explore the relationship between procedural justice and perceptions of legitimacy in citizen-police interactions, based on publicly available video vignettes. This study will analyse how both citizens and police officers judge the four key procedural justice predictors of police legitimacy (participation and voice; fairness and neutrality; dignity and respect; conveying trustworthy motives) in real-life policing events (https://osf.io/gmc4z). We have engaged with policing practitioners from West Midlands Police in the design of this research. Finally, as part of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed a platform sharing tributes and gratitude to others using an online tool aimed at exploring how this behaviour impacts on people's attitudes (https://gratitude-tree.org/) |
| Exploitation Route | We are already drawing on this systematic understanding of police-citizen collaboration apps to inform the design of new technologies to support community policing interactions. We expect the findings to inform further research into the development and use of digital technologies for policing, as well as policing practice. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Government Democracy and Justice |
| URL | https://www.citizenforensics.org/publications/ |
| Description | Our research interactions between police and citizens (https://oro.open.ac.uk/92558/), engaged practitioners and the public to provide them with a deeper understanding of the socio-technical factors that affect these interactions. This work engaged community groups in Milton Keynes, as well as police practitioners in Thames Valley and Merseyside. Additionally, our technology review, analysing a set of mobile apps used for citizen-police engagement, was published in the Journal of Police Practice and Research (https://oro.open.ac.uk/74072/). This work was was supported by policing practitioners from Thames Valley Police (Milton Keynes) and presented to members of 23 police forces through an event organised by the Open University's Centre for Policing Research & Learning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKrOEfUGdiE). Finally, our work on the impact of social media on eye witness memory was presented at the 'Festival of Impact', attended by policing practitioners from across the UK (https://oro.open.ac.uk/75649/) highlighting the need for police forces to consider how self-investigation using social media affects reliability of eye witness identification. The overall programme of research supported the creation of a new research centre that will bring together experts in law, psychology, artificial intelligence and software engineering to study ways of improving online safety for women and girls (https://ounews.co/around-ou/university-news/the-open-university-awarded-7-7m-to-protect-women-and-girls-online/). |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal Policy & public services |
| Description | Presentation on Building trust in digital policing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A presentation to representatives of the policing member organisations in the Centre for Policing Research and Learning, reporting on the findings of your systematic review of community policing applications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKrOEfUGdiE |