Abstract

This presentation was delivered to the Law and Society Conference at the University of Akureyri, Iceland in October 2021.

International criminality within the UK is a significant problem with foreign national offenders representing around 18% of all arrests and 12% of the prison population. In 2018, awareness of foreign national offending among police forces was extremely low with huge inconsistencies of approach being applied in response to this growing threat.
To address the issue, mixed methods research was conducted with initial efforts focussed upon attempting to determine the extent of inconsistency within forces and the most common areas of failure. Following desk-based analysis of data, it became clear that the introduction of standardised national guidance to educate and better guide officers, was desirable. Primary research using questionnaires was then conducted with two cohorts of operational officers in an attempt to shape the content of any new national guidance. In total, responses were received from around 800 officers, belonging to a number of different police forces.
National guidance was subsequently produced and in 2019, published by the College of Policing as Authorised Professional Practice (APP), becoming an important operational and risk-reduction tool, available to over 120,000 officers in England and Wales.