Issue 393  12th April 2025

Communities will be safer and trust in local policing will be restored under plans to put police officers back in our neighbourhoods, announced by the Prime Minister today, as he delivers manifesto pledge to roll out the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee. New measures will ensure every community will have dedicated and specialist neighbourhood policing teams, ending the postcode lottery on law and order...

The measures will put prevention at the heart of policing. Under the government’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, crimes like vandalism or antisocial behaviour will be less likely to turn into more serious and violent offences, boosting confidence and security in local communities across Britain. The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will put 13,000 more officers into neighbourhood policing roles by 2029, an increase of more than 50%. The early focus of the plan will be to establish named local officers, target town centre crime and build back neighbourhood policing, meaning hard working people can feel safer and more secure in their daily lives.

The measures, announced today, will transform communities across Britain and will deliver the security communities deserve:

• Each neighbourhood will have named, contactable officers to tackle the issues facing their communities, helping to restore trust that policing is working to keep people safe and meaning no community feels ignored when they need help.
• Every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have dedicated teams who will spend their time on the beat with guaranteed police patrols in town centres and other hotspot areas at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights.
• There will be a dedicated antisocial behaviour lead in every force, working with residents and businesses to develop tailored action plans to tackle record levels of antisocial behaviour, which is blighting communities.

Barbershops and other cash-intensive businesses across England and Wales have been targeted by police and other law enforcement officers during a three-week crackdown on high street crime. In total, 265 premises were visited across Operation Machinize, where officers secured freezing orders over bank accounts totalling more than £1m, executed 85 warrants and made 35 arrests.

The operation saw 55 individuals questioned about their immigration status and a further 97 individuals safeguarded in relation to potential modern slavery. In addition, officers seized more than £40,000 in cash, some 200,000 cigarettes, 7,000 packs of tobacco, over 8,000 illegal vapes and two vehicles. Two cannabis farms were also found, containing a total of 150 plants. Ten shops have been shut, with further closures expected as a result of on-going investigations.

The NCA estimates that £12bn of criminal cash is generated in the UK each year, which is typically smuggled out of the country or integrated into the legitimate financial system using a variety of laundering techniques. Cash-intensive businesses such as barbershops, vape shops, nail bars, American-themed sweet shops and car washes are often used by criminals to conceal the origins of illicit cash. Crime gangs use them to enter cash into the financial system, mixing legitimate funds with criminal profits to hinder subsequent law enforcement investigations. They are known to buy such businesses using the proceeds of crime, which provides them with a legitimate income and opportunities for money laundering. The crackdown, which is part of the NCA’s continued disruption of cash being laundered in the UK, involved 19 different police forces and Regional Organised Crime Units, as well as national agencies including HMRC, Trading Standards and Home Office Immigration Enforcement...

The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers. Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences. The scheme was originally called the “homicide prediction project”, but its name has been changed to “sharing data to improve risk assessment”. The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help boost public safety but campaigners have called it “chilling and dystopian”. The existence of the project was discovered by the pressure group Statewatch, and some of its workings uncovered through documents obtained by Freedom of Information requests...

The MoJ says the scheme will “review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide” and “explore alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment of homicide”. The project would “provide evidence towards improving risk assessment of serious crime, and ultimately contribute to protecting the public via better analysis”, a spokesperson added. The project, which was commissioned by the prime minister’s office when Rishi Sunak was in power, is using data about crime from various official sources including the Probation Service and data from Greater Manchester police before 2015...