The East Midlands Policing Academic Collaboration (EMPAC) exists to improve policing and cut crime in the region through research and innovation, taking a forward-looking solution-oriented and Peelian principles approach throughout.
Our purpose is to improve policing practice through intelligence-driven research and innovation ideas. We do this by bringing together policing and security professionals with academic researchers to:-
- drive research, innovation and enterprise for the policing purpose, focusing on policing priorities
- inform solutions and strategies to shared policing problems in the region by working with a diverse network of researchers, practitioners and stakeholders to proactively identify insights and innovation opportunities
Our history
The 2023 Routledge book An Introduction to Police Research charts the history of EMPAC –https://empac.org.uk/new-book-celebrates-empacs-best-practice-in-police-academic-partnerships/.
The East Midlands Policing Academic Collaboration (EMPAC) was formally established through the College of Policing’s Police Knowledge Fund as a regional knowledge exchange and mobilisation hub. EMPAC was created to improve policing and reduce crime in the East Midlands by facilitating effective connections between the region’s nine universities, five police forces, and community stakeholders to accelerate research-informed improvement and innovation in policing.
EMPAC was established as a knowledge brokerage and strategic intelligence service, offering practical support to forces and Offices of the Police and Crime Commissioners within the East Midlands by mobilising regional academic capacity ad capabilities, facilitating cross-force learning, and innovating more effective methods for police-academic-community collaboration.
EMPAC’s founding purpose is to ensure research insights translate into operational practice by connecting policing and security professionals with the right academic expertise at the right time, and by integrating intelligence from key stakeholders into evidence-informed decision-making. We achieve this by:
1. Mobilising regional expertise: Connecting forces with relevant researchers across the East Midlands’ nine universities, ensuring comprehensive access to diverse academic specialisms and coordinating collaborative responses to policing priorities
2. Brokering knowledge exchange: Translating research outputs into practical tools, implementation guides, and strategic briefings that frontline officers and commanders can immediately use in operational contexts
3. Facilitating cross-force innovation transfer: Creating structured mechanisms where forces share local innovations and collectively develop solutions to shared challenges, multiplying the value of individual force investments
4. Integrating stakeholder and community intelligence: Systematically capturing insights and priorities of key stakeholders to inform research agendas and co-design future strategies
5. Innovating collaboration methods: Evaluating and continuously improving how police-academic-community partnerships function to make engagement more effective, efficient, and impactful
Our approach
EMPAC focuses on real-world operational translation and knowledge mobilisation. We work across the entire knowledge ecosystem, taking mixed-method research from any relevant source and ensuring it achieves maximum operational impact across the East Midlands region. Our distinctive approach centres on:
- Active knowledge mobilisation: Moving insights between forces, universities, and stakeholders to ensure innovations developed in one context benefit all partners
- Multi-stakeholder brokerage: Facilitating peer learning between forces and integrating stakeholder intelligence into strategic planning
- Translation and implementation support: Converting knowledge exchange outcomes into formats that can effectively inform strategy, including evidence briefs, implementation toolkits, and strategic recommendations
- Cross-force learning infrastructure: Establishing structured mechanisms for innovation sharing that reduce duplication, accelerate adoption of effective practices, and pool regional capacity
- Triadic knowledge exchange: Integrating community perspectives as research inputs and co-design partners, creating richer intelligence and more legitimate interventions KTPs: facilitate the creation of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with forces in the region
We co-produce high-impact knowledge exchange products for operational policing and provide specialist support for research commissioning, grant applications, Knowledge Transfer Partnership development, and collaborative toolkits. We also have our own specialist expertise to deliver research products and can also support and advise local forces on research and innovation opportunities. EMPAC developed the Impact Capacity Rating Tool https://empac.org.uk/empacs-research-impact-tool-attracts-growing-interest/ at the behest of police chief officers to drive future operationalised research impact because regional chief officers had been often frustrated in the past by a stream of irrelevant research that had little benefit to real-world policing application.
EMPAC is not a research funding body but will act as a bidding partner for any relevant external research grant applications.
Track record and sustainability
Operating efficiently on minimal resources, EMPAC generates competitive research income and produced more outputs than any of the 14 PKF / Home Office-funded police-academic collaborations nationally, when EMPAC was hosted by the University of Northampton (on behalf of the region). EMPAC has been pivotal in supporting several proactive health-based (rather than reactive treatment based) research insights that promise transformational change for policing policy and practice of the future. These projects include Think OCB, not OCG (in liaison with the NCA), Solution Oriented Practice (aligned to DMU’s strategic driving of the UK’s contribution to the UN’s SDG 11) and Pathways Plus (to reduce re-offending, piloted in Leicester). EMPAC also hosted the national SEBP Conference, at Northampton, in 2017.
Evaluation and Impact Insight Reports have been conducted for Leicester Community Safety Partnership on Violence Against Women and Girls, especially concerning the Night-Time Economy (working with Professor Loretta Tricket, NTU); for the Home Office on the Clear Hold Build SOC strategy; Workforce Efficiencies for Derbyshire Constabulary; for the NPCC on Police Bursaries and the Role of Communities in Police Training; the Police Funding Formula for Lincolnshire Police and Reducing Reoffending for Nottinghamshire OPCC.
Our lean, high-impact model creates sustainable value through:
- Trusted critical friend for regional policing to trouble shoot, evaluate and offer new ideas
- External research grant partnerships as co-investigator
- Knowledge Transfer Partnership facilitation and coordination across forces
- Translation and implementation services for research commissioning bodies
- Innovation evaluation and cross-force transfer consultancy
- Professional development for knowledge brokerage practitioners in policing
Leadership
EMPAC’s previous strategic leads have included Craig Naylor (then a chief officer with Lincolnshire Police and now Chief HMIC for Scotland); Hardyal Dhindsa (former PCC for Derbyshire); Simon Cole (former Chief Constable, Leicestershire Police) who presented the regional EMPAC award; whilst the current strategic sponsor is Chief Constable Paul Gibson, a genetics graduate with a doctorate in molecular medicine. CC Gibson was ACC in Lincolnshire before moving to Derbyshire Constabulary in 2018, prior to being DCC at East Midlands Special Operations Unit. He is now Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police.
Resourcing
EMPAC’s Principal Researcher is Dr John Coxhead, a former police officer, who now also works in universities, supervising doctoral students. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, has held professorships at Keele, Staffordshire, De Montfort and Loughborough Universities in the midlands, and is the IPES (New York) official advisor to the United Nations (Geneva) on policing matters.
Professor Coxhead has supported the East Midlands region with several research insight projects and undertaken several nationally commissioned pieces of work for the Home Office.
Data principles
Respecting the importance and sensitivity of policing and security within society, collaborative research data remains owned by police partners and is not used or disseminated without explicit permission through jointly agreed data processing contracts and data protection agreements.
Respecting the importance and sensitivity of policing and security within society, collaborative research data will be owned by the Police, and will not be not be used or disseminated without explicit Police permission (e.g. a specific jointly agreed data processing contract or data protection agreement).
Contact us
Telephone 07470 181050