I expect this formula is now firmly planted in your brain.

Pkj=(1-rj)Ckj+rj(Ckj+qKj-Pkj). I think I have this right, though if not it may not matter. For this is the now discredited algorithm that has caused so much misery for students sitting A levels and other public exams this year. It’s not quite as memorable as E=MC², but I doubt whether we need to worry since I can’t see it being used again as a way of predicting student grades.

But it would be a pity if this debacle causes us to lose faith in taking a more scientific approach to predicting future possibilities, including possibilities for policing. If we don’t see the significance of this we will be back to basing decisions on guesses and hunches. So we need people (police staff rather than warranted officers) who are skilled in understanding what data is needed, how to interpret it and how it can be used in decision-making: we need good and thoughtful analysts.

Fortunately, South Yorkshire Police has invested in some very good people. I had a conversation with one last week who told me about one aspect of what his team do: predicting future patterns of crime.

To take a straightforward example: the four councils (Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster) are busy producing local plans that set out where new housing developments will be. Some are already part built with more to follow. This is vital knowledge for those who are making strategic decisions about what kind of police resources will be needed in future and where they need to be located, because new developments have implications for all sorts of policing issues – from traffic to crime.

So, more houses of a certain quality mean, potentially, more residential burglaries and more car thefts from driveways. Being able to predict how many and how frequently provokes thinking about the kind of preventive and other strategies that can be developed to thwart the burglars and the thieves and keep people safe.

As soon as you grasp how certain types of data open your mind to possibilities, you see why the government’s commitment to increase police officer numbers (and our own increase) is not, by itself, going to have the impact on crime that it could. Extra officers is a good thing. But more police without the illumination the analysts can bring could become a recipe for frustration and inefficiency.

So Fiat Lux. You need analytic capability as well as police on the ground, otherwise officers will be constantly playing catch up with criminals.

And you really don’t need an algorithm to tell you that.

Whose voices are we missing?

We had a second meeting with members of the Sheffield Black community last week. Someone from the Youth Offending Service and the Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor attended – all remotely, of course. We spent time discussing criminal justice matters, not least why the disproportionality of black young people worsens the further they go in the criminal justice system – and therefore the need to prevent them getting into it at a young age in the first place. The prosecutor also had to make it clear that sentencing was not something any of us could directly influence: this was a matter for the judges, who were independent.

But as we talked I recalled a meeting I had last year with a group of mainly Asian young Muslims who wanted to chat about policing. They were all teenagers; but what was so unusual was that they were all girls. Most of the meetings I am asked to go to are dominated by older (and sometimes younger) males.

As I started to talk about what I thought might be the issues they were concerned with, they stopped me. No, they insisted. This wasn’t their agenda. I had been listening to the boys and the men. Their priorities were different.

As far as stop and search was concerned, that was a boys issue. They didn’t like it if it was done insensitively, but as girls, they were glad if weapons could be taken off boys and off the streets. Knowing that boys might have blades made them feel unsafe. And also, as one said, ‘as a Muslim, I don’t want boys doing drugs and trying to involve me in it. I’m glad the police are trying to stop it.’

They then went on to talk about what did concern them. The issues here ranged from not always feeling safe when travelling on public transport to having racial comments made about them in the street if they wore the hijab. But they all said they would find it hard to talk to the police about it, whether the police were BAME or white, male or female. And no, they didn’t think of the police as a possible career.

We are all trying hard at the moment to hear other voices, voices that may not have been heard as they should have been in the past. Those of BAME teenage girls has to be one of them.

Your comments

When we started this blog 20 weeks ago, it was an attempt to keep in touch with those who have an ongoing and broad interest in policing and criminal justice matters in South Yorkshire, at a time when none of us was able to meet in person in the way we once did. We currently have over 1,700 people receiving the blog regularly – and some, I know, send it on to others.

We have also had a number of people email their own responses to it or comments on it – something I very much welcome. So, if you agree or disagree or see things differently, please send us an email. It would be good to hear from you: [email protected]

I hope you are staying safe and well.