Dr Samantha Lundrigan, Pathway Leader for Criminology at Anglia Ruskin University, is set to embark on two new research projects in conjunction with two different police bodies.

The importance of partnerships between police and academics was stressed in the recent Science and Technology Innovation Strategy published by the National Policing Improvements Agency in April 2010. The strategy called for a closing of the 'gulf' between researchers and police, and assurances that police were harnessing science, technology and social science to maximum effect.

Dr Lundrigan's projects exemplify this embedded approach to police practice-based research collaboration, aiming both to develop evidence-based policing and produce research outcomes with clear operational benefits.

The first of these projects involves developing an offender based interview tool with Cambridgeshire Constabulary. This tool will be designed for use with the area's Priority and Prolific Offenders. From an academic perspective, the project will enhance understanding of offender decision-making and will explore the psychological and environmental factors that determine where offenders commit their crimes. In practical terms, the development of a tool that allows for a focused understanding of offender behaviour and geography has obvious operational utility for front-line policing and crime detection.

In January 2011, Dr Lundrigan was also invited to work with the Serious Crime Analysis Section (SCAS) of the National Policing Improvements Agency to examine male-on-male stranger rape. The Serious Crime Analysis Section (SCAS) was initiated by the Home Office in 1998 to identify the potential emergence of serial killers and serial rapists at the earliest stage. Together with a colleague from the University of Cambridge, Dr Lundrigan is working on the development of a behavioural model of male-on-male stranger rape.

The study will help to remedy the current lack of base rate information regarding the types and frequencies of behaviours that occur in male rape. This is crucial when trying to determine those facets of offences that are behaviourally important - a central question for stranger rape investigations.

Both of these projects champion the philosophy of practice-based research: research that reaches beyond the pages of the academic journal, with the potential to have significant social and economic impact in the wider community.

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