This week, the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration (KPAC) is hosting a workshop on the issue of Organised Crime Groups (OCGs). As well as strengthening Keele’s collaboration with Royal Holloway, the workshop will be attended by representatives from several police forces across England and will be an opportunity for police force representatives to meet the key academics leading the research and for KPAC to bring focus on the journey toward research co-production and pathways to impact.
The Institute for the Study of Power, Crime, and Society (PCS Institute) at Royal Holloway, University of London, is collaborating with the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration (KPAC) to organise a workshop on the issue of Organized Criminal Groups.
Under the Direction of Professor Giovanni Travaglino, the PCS Institute was recently awarded a prestigious £1.5m European Research Council project (funded by UKRI). The project titled “Secret Power” explores the social psychological dynamics through which OCGs embed themselves within societies to the point where some communities feel it is legitimate to shield them from routine and specialist investigative techniques deployed by police.
KPAC’s Director Professor Clifford Stott sits on the Advisory Board of the Secret Power project and has consequently developed the workshop with KPAC’s Professor of Practice Marcus Beale. In addition to Professor Travaglino, the workshop will hear presentations from John Denley, Head of Investigations at the National Crime Agency and Paolo Palazzo, the Deputy Chief of the Department of Judicial Police at the Public Persecutor’s Office in Turin, Italy.
As well as strengthening Royal Holloway’s collaboration with Keele, the workshop will be attended by representatives from several police forces across England and will be an opportunity for police force representatives to meet the key academics leading the research.
The workshop will be held on Tuesday, 7th March 2023.