Introduction
This paper introduces a research and policy initiative examining the transformation of policing institutions in response to the evolving challenges posed by digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI, changing the landscape of crimes and operational environments. Emerging from a workshop convened at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics in February 2026, this project represents a collaborative effort among senior police leaders, academics, technologists and others to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding and guiding the future of how policing can contribute to public safety provision in the digital era.
This positional paper serves as the first in a series of publications that will examine distinct dimensions of police reform while contributing to a coherent whole. The initiative is positioned as an ongoing working group rather than a discrete conference, emphasizing iterative refinement and sustained engagement. Its aim is to be reflective of global nuances in the construct of policing organisations, not constrained to any particular region, and is open to international representation. This approach treats the forthcoming papers as contributions to ongoing dialogue, with plans to continuously revisit and refine analyses based on feedback and emerging developments. Workshop participants felt a pressing need to offer these papers, in the hopes they help inform and shape early discourse between the public and policing institutions around the legitimate exercise of police power and public trust in the 21st centrury – ideas historically articulated in the Peelian tradition, but understood now in a broader and more global context.
The initiative deliberately adopts a technologically focused but locationally agnostic stance, emphasizing questions of organizational design, digitalization and interoperability that transcend particular jurisdictional or ideological contexts. This framing seeks to create intellectual space for innovation that can inform policing institutions and decision-makers of diverse types operating within different political and legal systems around the world, recognising that policing by consent with and for the communities it serves needs to be based upon informed principles that are ethically sound and human rights compliant.
Research Question and Scope
The central research question animating this initiative asks: “What institutional forms, organizational structures and technological systems are required for legitimate and effective policing in an increasingly digital society?” This broad inquiry encompasses fundamental questions about organizational design, normative foundations, technological infrastructure, and accountability mechanisms within police agencies worldwide.
The workshop sought to identify a number of common principles that preserve the core idea of consent-based policing – the notion that police legitimacy rests on public trust and restraint in the exercise of power – while enabling bold, data- and AI-enabled transformation for use around the world. Adopting a design-centric approach, participants worked to develop a framework that identifies essential elements rather than comprehensive prescriptions.
Paper Series Overview
The conclusions of the working group will be structured into three foundational papers that will form the intellectual architecture of this initiative, each addressing distinct but interconnected dimensions of police reform:
Paper 1: Renewing the Foundations of Consent-Based Policing
The first substantive paper will establish the normative foundations for the entire initiative. Across diverse legal and historical traditions, policing has been shaped by the principle that authority must be exercised with legitimacy, restraint, and public consent – ideas prominently articulated in the Anglo policing tradition by Sir Robert Peel and influential in democratic policing contexts within and beyond Anglo jurisdictions. However, these principles were developed for a specific historical and regional context characterized by limited information flows, localized communities, and minimal technological mediation of police-public interactions.
This foundational paper will re-examine Peel's core insights, policing by consent, prevention as the primary objective, minimal use of force, and political independence through the lens of digital transformation, algorithmic decision-making, and mass data collection to common recognized standards. The analysis will draw on contemporary scholarship in democratic theory, institutional legitimacy, and technology governance to articulate how these principles translate into contexts characterized by AI-enabled operations and data-centric approaches.
The Peelian principles rest on public confidence, consent and trust. This is especially salient in a period of rapid technological change, where data‑driven systems and emerging capabilities are advancing faster than public understanding or confidence in their governance. There is work to be done to bring the public with us in uncertain times, particularly against a backdrop of wider societal unease about the pace, opacity, and direction of technological development.
Reaffirming the commitment best enshrined in Peel’s principles through a new global interpretation requires openness, engagement, and restraint, ensuring that innovation strengthens democratic legitimacy rather than outpacing it. Equally important, the public must remain partners in, rather than subjects of, policing in the digital age. That reaffirmation also requires ethics and human rights considerations to be operationalised, not merely asserted. In a modern police organization this means embedding human rights compliance ethical principles as design requirements into technologies, governance, and everyday decision making through clear accountability, transparent safeguards, independent oversight, and continuous public scrutiny. Ethics and human rights cannot sit downstream as assurance or remediation; they must shape how capabilities are conceived, procured, deployed, and evaluated. Only by making ethical practice a core operating discipline can policing remain worthy of public trust in a digital age.
The paper will set the tone for subsequent work by establishing that technological capability must serve rather than displace democratic legitimacy, and that consent-based policing in both the physical and virtual domains remains both achievable and essential in the digital age.
Paper 2: Hierarchy and Organizational Resilience – To Better Empower Policing on the Frontline
The second paper addresses organizational structure, examining the tension between traditional command hierarchies and distributed decision-making models which digital technologies may enable. Modern policing exhibits an inherited organizational constraint; while technological systems may enable real-time information sharing and decision-making by front-line officers, institutional structures remain heavily hierarchical, often modelled on military organizations with decision-making power further away from the source of information.
This paper will analyze policing enablers at the front line, first-line supervision, career pathways, devolved decision making, leadership, training content, and incentive structures, with particular attention to compensation systems. A key argument will advocate moving away from traditional hierarchical pay band structures toward skill-based compensation models that recognize the diverse competencies, technological literacy, community engagement, and analytical capabilities required in contemporary policing.
The analysis will examine how organizations can devolve decision rights, data and tools to officers and first-line supervisors at the front line while maintaining control and coordination, standards, and accountability. The paper will draw on organizational economics, principal-agent theory, and comparative institutional analysis to evaluate alternative structural models and their implications for both operational effectiveness and democratic accountability.
Organizational resilience
We will end with a discussion of organizational resilience, a topic that emerged organically and within our discussions. We established that the topic comes in two ‘flavors’; technological resilience that focuses on system sustainability during potential failures or cyber attacks, and institutional resilience that focuses on maintaining legitimacy and effectiveness during crises and evolving environments.
Paper 3: Policing in a Digital Age - What could a civil public safety platform look like?
The third paper constitutes the operational core of the initiative, examining what a data-centric policing philosophy entails in practice. This represents the ‘beating heart’ of digital policing, addressing fundamental questions about institutional arrangements, technological infrastructure, governance frameworks, and data standards. A key component of this paper will be a discussion on how to define and measure performance.
The concept of a ‘civil public safety platform’ will be developed to encompass not only technological systems but also the governance mechanisms and partnership structures required for whole-of-society approaches to public safety. This framing positions policing institutions as one component within a broader ecosystem that includes community organizations, social services, private sector capabilities, and civic institutions while ensuring data security, protected privacy for the public, and transparency to build public trust.
Critically, we will be decoupling discussions of police mission from police oversight. We treat these as distinct governance challenges; the former concerning what policing institutions should accomplish and through what means and the latter addressing accountability mechanisms and democratic control. Conflating these questions has historically produced analytical confusion and impeded reform efforts.
The paper will address questions of affordability, sustainability, ethics, and domestic and international interoperability. It will argue against bespoke national solutions in favor of standardized platforms and protocols that enable information sharing while respecting jurisdictional sovereignty. The analysis will examine digital and data ownership models, in-house development, shared infrastructure, or hybrid arrangements with specialist partners, and their implications for maintaining strategic control within democratic institutions while accessing necessary technical capabilities.
Metrics
A key part of automating decision making is being able to reliably assess performance of both individual officers and groups in real time. Against us is Goodhart’s Law, which states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ Initially aimed at the financial industry, we believe that it applies equally to policing, amongst others. On the other hand, it is difficult to game a number of performance indicators continuously and simultaneously. We will propose a number of measurements that we believe will capture the multidimensional nature of public safety outcomes, while allowing for a reliable performance assessment that prioritizes public outcomes and officer wellbeing.
Key Themes
Several cross-cutting themes emerged from workshop discussions:
Whole-of-society civil responsibility: Positioning police as one significant component within a broader ecosystem that includes community organizations, social services, academia, industry, and civic institutions.
Ethical cornerstone: Developing actionable ethical frameworks and metrics that shape how capabilities are conceived, procured, deployed, evaluated, and respect human rights law[1].
Decoupling mission from oversight: Analytically separating what police should accomplish from how they are held accountable to enable more precise governance analysis.
Skill-based compensation and organizational structure: Recognizing diverse competencies through dynamic structures that connect fairness, motivation, organizational culture, and professional identity.
Affordable, sustainable, and geographically interoperable systems: Examining how standardized platforms and protocols can enable cooperation while respecting institutional diversity, legal responsibility, and jurisdictional sovereignty.
Technology-focused but politically agnostic approach: Emphasizing technical and organizational questions to develop frameworks applicable across diverse institutional contexts.
Conclusion
This initiative seeks to develop a comprehensive analytical framework for understanding and guiding policing in the digital age. By addressing both foundational questions about legitimacy and purpose, as well a operational questions about organizational structure and technological systems, the paper series aims to provide actionable guidance for institutions navigating rapid change.
The critical pathway approach seeks to identify essential elements rather than prescribe comprehensive solutions. This reflects recognition that policing institutions operate within diverse legal, political, and cultural contexts that require adaptation of general principles to local circumstances. The framework provides analytical structure while preserving space for institutional variation and experimentation.
The success of this initiative will be measured not by achieving consensus among participants or stakeholders, but by its capacity to generate productive debate, inform institutional experimentation, and contribute to scholarly understanding of public safety provision in technologically mediated societies. The papers that follow will develop these themes in greater depth, with each contributing distinct analytical insights while advancing a coherent vision for twenty-first century policing.
Later this year, the team will revisit and refine these concepts to serve as a launchpad to a series of detailed international design tracks to progress the necessary thinking to develop a roadmap towards success to this complex challenge - “What institutional forms, organizational structures, and technological systems are required for legitimate and effective policing in an increasingly digital society?”.
We invite feedback, critique, and engagement with these ideas as part of an ongoing dialogue about the future of democratic policing in an age of digital transformation. Please post your comments on our discussion page. Or if you would like to submit your comments privately or anonymously please email them to T.Kirchmaier@lse.ac.uk.
Participants
Irakli Beridze, UNICRI, United Nations
Chris Church, INTERPOL
Megan Hoey, Capgemini
Tom Kirchmaier, CEP/LSE
Rachel Lewis, City of London Police
William Lyne, Met Police
João Mota, VOID Software
Mick O'Connell, UNICRI & Critical Insights Consultancy Ltd
Emily Owens, CEP/LSE & UCI
Emma Persson, UNICRI, United Nations, Centre for AI and Robotics
Michalis Pittalis, Cyprus Police
Liam Price, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
Dominic Reese, North Rhine-Westphalia Police, Germany
Inger Marie Sunde, Politihøgskolen / Norwegian Police University College
Chris Sykes, Greater Manchester Police (GMP)
Dick van Veldhuizen, Roseman Labs
Ben Waites, Europol
Liz Ward, Met Police
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions or policies of the organizations with which they are affiliated. Special thanks to Catherine Ojo and Janey Tietz for invaluable support with this project. The proceedings were transcribed using Notion, the summaries were produced using Notion and Claude, and the presentation drafted using Gamma. All automated summaries were edited and signed off by us humans. All errors are our own.
25 February 2026
[1] Human Rights Law
International human rights law is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. International and regional human rights covenants or treaties are the main instruments which prescribe States’ human rights obligations. States agree to be bound by these obligations when they ratify these treaties. There are nine core human rights treaties. All States have ratified at least one of these treaties, which means that all States are bound to human rights obligations.