Edinburgh Napier University

  INTERACT (Investigating New Types of Engagement, Response and Contact Technologies in Policing) is a wide-ranging study of the use of technology in interactions between the police and public. It explores recent shifts towards technologically-mediated contact, to explore whether, and how, police organisations can pursue their aims of providing a procedurally just experience for users, and build legitimacy with various publics, whilst fundamentally changing the nature and form of ‘police contact’. Technologically-mediated contact may involve online and digital reporting, social media, Body Worn Video and police Mobile Data Terminals, for example. The project will also benefit the academic community through advancing current theorisation of procedural justice to take account of technologically-mediated interaction and its compatibility with police legitimacy; this, in turn, will broaden our understanding of the implications of the digital age for the wider criminal justice system.
The aims of this research are:
1. To understand and document police and public perceptions and experiences of technologically-mediated contact across the UK in a diverse range of contexts.
2. To assess the potential impact of different types of technologically-mediated contact on police legitimacy for various publics.
3. To theorise what 'visible' and 'accessible' policing means in the digital age, to both the police and various publics.
4. To establish the role of technologically-mediated contact in building police legitimacy, and to feed research-informed practice back to police organisations to allow them to best work towards this end.
5. To develop theories of legitimacy and procedural justice such that they are practically applicable and fit for purpose in a period of rapid technological development.