Assessing the efficacy of a digital toolkit which aims to close gaps in digital lines of enquiry for domestic abuse investigations.
| Status |
Ongoing
|
|---|---|
| Lead institution | |
| Principal researcher(s) |
DI Fiona Gray and Dr Rob Ewin
|
| Police region |
North West
|
| Collaboration and partnership |
|
| Level of research |
Professional/work based
|
| Project start date |
|
| Date due for completion |
|
Hypothesis
Officers exposed to a digital toolkit will more readily identify and pursue digital lines of enquiry. This will be identified through a review of 250 treatment crimes against 250 control crimes from the same period.
Geographical area
Cumbria
Target sample size
250 treatment crimes versus 250 control crimes
Participants - inclusion criteria
Response/front line officers attending and investigating domestic abuse incidents, excluding a list of more serious offences such as sexual offences and grievous bodily harm (GBH) which are more likely to be investigated by a specialist officer.
Interventions
The toolkit has been created by the Digital Media Investigation (DMI) team at Cumbria Constabulary. It is a Microsoft Sway product with separate sections for victim considerations, suspect considerations, scene considerations and digital safeguarding. There are a number of videos embedded in the toolkit.
An officer reviews domestic abuse logs each day. When an incident is reported which meets the criteria for selection it goes through a randomiser to be allocated to the treatment or control.
If it is randomised in, the officer is provided with the toolkit. If the incident is randomised out, they are not.
The trial will run for as long as required until 250 cases have been randomised in and 250 have been randomised out, or until no further police officers are available.
Study design
This is a basic randomised study comparing a treatment to a control group. Officers who have been randomised in previously cannot be randomised in for a period of four weeks afterwards.
Outcome measures
A bespoke 29 point review will be undertaken on all 500 randomised and control crimes to identify whether there is an overall improvement in recognising and undertaking relevant digital lines of enquiry.