Police and New Technology: How Digital Is Transforming Police Forces

While the last ten years have seen digital transformation sweep through many agencies and organisations across the public sector, law enforcement has been slower to adopt new technologies — particularly those that enable communication with constituents on digital platforms. 

But things are quickly changing, thanks in large part to massive shifts in how people access, share and find information about critical services — law enforcement included. 

Responding to criticisms from MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which expressed “serious concerns” about the digital capabilities and tech adoption of police forces, the 2018 State of Policing report noted that the time was ripe for police forces to invest in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to cope with the evolving nature of crime.

In the report, Sir Thomas Winsor, Chief Inspector and head of HMICFRS, argued, “As long as the police persist in using 20th-century methods to try to cope with 21st-century technology and ways of life, they will continue to fall further and further behind, and the quality of justice will exponentially diminish.”

Of course, this begs the question: how can police forces apply new digital technologies into their processes and operations?

What Police Forces Can Learn from the Private Sector’s Use of Technology

The private sector offers a wealth of insights and guidance on applying tried and proven technologies to transform business processes. Placing these use cases in the context of law enforcement simply requires thinking of the appropriate stakeholders and core services.

For example:

• Instead of customers, citizens or residents of the community should be the focus of digital technology adoption. 
• Police forces can develop strategies for leveraging technology to transform core services. These include reporting and responding to antisocial behaviour (ASB) complaints, welfare checks and more. 

Below are three few examples of how new technologies can deliver value to both police forces and their stakeholders. 

1. Automation

Automation arguably offers the most value to the average police force. In the private sector, organisations such as utility companies depend on scheduling applications to automatically send tasks to engineers. Similarly, retail businesses use automation to push the latest offers to customers based on their preferences, last product purchased and browsing habits. 

Police forces can leverage chatbots to keep up with the surge of people turning to messaging apps to engage organisations in both the public and private sectors. Police chatbots provide instant answers to frequently asked questions and serve as an alternative to dialling 101 for non-emergency situations, reducing call volumes and call waiting times.

This can be a massive help for police forces struggling to keep up with calls. In 2019, the BBC reported that only 49% of calls to the Met Police’s Crime Management Service (CMS) were answered.

Norfolk Constabulary offers an example of how chatbots can help answer people’s non-urgent queries — in their case the force answers questions between the hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday. The chatbot can also escalate the conversation to a live agent during business hours. 

2. Social Media Listening

Brands and marketing agencies use social media to listen to customer sentiment, mood and content influence to determine how they can create targeted messages that resonate with customers. Police forces can use a similar approach to understand their citizens’ most frequent reports, where incidents of ASB happen most and what people’s concerns are about public safety. 

3. Digital Self-Service Channels

In the context of enterprises, self-service or self-serve is a user experience (UX) feature that enables customers to complete tasks without the intervention of a customer service representative. For example, the hospitality industry uses self-service functionality to help hotel guests book reservations and self-check-in when they arrive at their hotel. 

Self-service through police chatbots offers a way for citizens to find the services they need without a human’s help. The chatbot signposts to services within the conversation, saving users the trouble of having to speak to a human to report a crime in the area. 

As demand for policing keeps growing, new technologies allow police forces to serve their constituents faster and more efficiently at scale. This digital transformation isn’t just about funding — although that is a big part of it. Police forces should also consider the challenge of coordinating training and leadership buy-in with technology upgrades to smoothen their transition.

Andy is the co-founder and CEO of Futr, a tech start-up providing superpowers to critical support teams across the UK. Futr was born in 2017 when Andy and co-founder Lee Skyrme saw the massive opportunity to use cutting edge artificial intelligence to transform the way we access public services. Four years later, with the support of an amazing team and fantastic VCs, Futr is proud to include the police, the NHS and many amazing charities and social services as valued customers.