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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5m

I wonder if there are any examples of police agencies designing policies/training type interventions to mitigate the risks of these kinds of biases? I've previously wondered if officers receive any training in logical fallacies, for example.

Reposted by Gavin Hales

Jerry Ratcliffe @jerryratcliffe.net · 1h

An interesting thought experiment here, and ... if you follow the logic of the thread, raises broader and potentially significant questions about the validity of 'lived experience' as a viable criminological research tool.

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

I've been wondering recently how many racist police officers were racist when they joined, and whether part of the issue is logical fallacies arising from having a lot of contact with very narrow sections of society in places with which they may not otherwise be familiar.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 39m

That's extremely helpful, thank you.

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 42m

I often think about the way I've heard some police talk about Traveller communities, as a similar White minority example.

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Reposted by Gavin Hales

Matt Ashby @mattashby.com · 1h

So it was important to remember that the offenders I was coming into contact with were a tiny and unrepresentative minority of a much larger community that I rarely met. But I can see how easy it would be to forget that if you’re not alert to the risk.

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Reposted by Gavin Hales

Matt Ashby @mattashby.com · 1h

What you described certainly matches my experience. Where I grew up meant I knew lots of Asian kids but few Black people. So when I was policing the Tube in Wembley in 2006, the only Somali teens I’d ever met were those we were arresting for robbery and I no other experiences to balance against.

…

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Reposted by Gavin Hales

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

I've been wondering recently how many racist police officers were racist when they joined, and whether part of the issue is logical fallacies arising from having a lot of contact with very narrow sections of society in places with which they may not otherwise be familiar.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

You may have noticed I have assumed it's a real risk. If you disagree with that assumption, I'd be interested to hear why.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

The thought that follows is this: how do we help police officers avoid their narrow experiences (their 'lived experiences') shaping their wider views about places and people, and recognise the risks of logical fallacies in their thinking and decision making that might result?

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

And that's most of your experience of that area. You don't live there, socialise there, have kids who go to school there, chat with parents or fellow dog walkers in the park there.

How does that shape your views of those places and the people who live there?

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

Now imagine you've grown up and live in the home counties and get a job policing a highly diverse part of inner London and spend your days dealing with people from backgrounds you don't share, who hurt other people in a variety of awful ways.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

Does this analogy work? Imagine you run a car repair garage and for whatever reason most of your customers drive BMWs, and they only bring them to you when they break down. Is there a risk you start thinking there's something wrong with BMWs in particular?

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

This links to the notion of 'blue-tinted spectacles', described to me some years ago by a serving officer, who had moved to live in an area he had previously policed and came to recognise how his policing experience had given him a very skewed picture of that place.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 5h

I've been wondering recently how many racist police officers were racist when they joined, and whether part of the issue is logical fallacies arising from having a lot of contact with very narrow sections of society in places with which they may not otherwise be familiar.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 28d

www.gov.uk/government/s...

Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

www.gov.uk

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 29d

And totally ignored in the debate about the policing of 'malicious communications', a sizeable chunk are domestic abuse related.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 11

I spotted an error in the final row of the table - corrected version here

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Reposted by Gavin Hales

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

Policy Exchange highlighting that the immediate custody rate for robbery last year was only 55%, but missing that's because very few child robbers get custodial sentences. For adults, the custody rate last year was 85%.

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Reposted by Gavin Hales

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

Can anyone explain to me why non-crime hate incidents aren't just logged as any other intelligence report, what if anything would be lost if they were, and why non-crime domestic incidents aren't part of the discussion? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

But the principle of recording non-crime incidents is identical.

Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

Was the focus on recording so they could be counted, in a way that other intel can't be?

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

Policy Exchange highlighting that the immediate custody rate for robbery last year was only 55%, but missing that's because very few child robbers get custodial sentences. For adults, the custody rate last year was 85%.

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Sep 10

Can anyone explain to me why non-crime hate incidents aren't just logged as any other intelligence report, what if anything would be lost if they were, and why non-crime domestic incidents aren't part of the discussion? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Jul 30

Policy Exchange have sounded the Zero Tolerance klaxon. www.thetimes.com/article/2dff...

Only 1 in 20 muggings in London were solved last year

A report by the Policy Exchange think tank calls for zero-tolerance enforcement in knife crime hotspots, and backs stop and search

www.thetimes.com

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · Jul 30

This is based on asking respondents to the Crime Survey if they reported their crime to police. That can then be used to estimate recording rates, but that's not what's shown here.

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