Covid19 and Future Threats: A Law Enforcement Delphi study

Abstract

On 30 January 2020 the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International concern” which posed an unprecedented threat. Chief police officers recognised that quick decisions needed to be taken, working with partners to ensure public safety and to help contain the spread of the virus. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) assumed the lead for the national policing response, using an enhanced cross portfolio command structure named Operation Talla.The work described in this report was commissioned by the NPCC and conducted by the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL, in consultation with Op Talla, to understand the effects of the pandemic on the policing response and future impacts. Here, we report the findings of the (Delphi) study, the aims of which were to elicit expert opinion from a wide range of UK law enforcement agency stakeholders (LEAs) to understand their perspectives about the police response to the pandemic, how the pandemic affected policing, what worked well and should continue, how the pandemic affected crime, and how crime mightchange as a consequence of other future drivers of changes (e.g. climate change, Brexit andtechnological change).