Crime, security and justice

Applying theoretical innovation to inform new ways of understanding and responding to crime.

We engage with real world problems to inform practitioners and policy-makers at local, national and international levels. We have close working relationships with governmental and other organisations engaged in the delivery of crime control and community safety.

Our research addresses such subjects as:

• policing and security governance;
• domestic violence against women;
• cybercrimes and security;
• the impact of new technologies on crimes and their control;
• the organisation of serious crimes;
• the governance of transnational crimes;
• drug markets and their regulation;
• and crime and the life course.

The work of criminological scholars in this theme has helped to shift the traditional focus of criminological theory and research beyond that of national criminal justice systems. Such work has explored global, national, regional and local influences on the shape and nature of crimes and their control in the ‘networked society’.

Our profile in researching crime and justice is based on a sustained track record of research and publications. Since 2001, we have received over £9 million in external research grants from funding agencies and public and private sector organisations including the British Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, European Commission, Home Office, Welsh Assembly Government, College of Policing, Metropolitan Police Service and the Airbus Group.

Significant projects

• University consortium for evidence-based crime reduction (Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council)
• Mapping services for victims of crime in South Wales (Funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales)
• Justice, Inequality and Gender-Based Violence (Funded by the ESRC)
• Defining and profiling serial domestic abuse perpetrators: A review of police and probation recording processes across Wales (Funded by the Wales Probation Service)
• Reducing the risk of vulnerable children/young people experiencing Child Sexual Exploitation (CSA) or demonstrating Sexually Harmful Behaviour (SHB) from further CSA or from becoming perpetrators of SHB (Funded by a Sustainable Social Services Third Sector Grant)..
• Investigating the link between social media activity and reporting crime (Funded by Metropolitan Police Service Centre for Scientific and Engineering Excellence)
• Social Media and Prediction: Crime Sensing, Data Integration & Statistical Modelling (Funded by ESRC under the NCRM Methods Innovation Call)
• Hate Speech and Social Media: Understanding Users, Networks and Information Flows (Funded by ESRC and Google)
• Identifying and Modelling Victim, Business, Regulatory and Malware Behaviours in a Changing Cyberthreat Landscape (Funded by EPSRC under the Global Uncertainties Consortia for Exploratory Research in Security (CEReS) call)
• Detecting and Preventing Mass Marketing Fraud (Funded by EPSRC)

Centres and groups

• Universities' Police Science Institute
  Established in collaboration with South Wales Police, UPSI has achieved international renown for developing innovative solutions to policing problems.
• University Research Institute on Crime and Security
  This research institute brings together interdisciplinary expertise from across the the University to develop new ways of understanding and responding to crime and security issues.
• Centre for Crime, Law and Justice
  This centre brings together researchers from the School of Social Sciences and the School of Law and Politics to explore shared interests in these fields.
• Social Data Science Lab
  A collaboration between social and computer scientists that work with ‘big data’ to address social science research problems.

Research highlights