Title - Policing, Vulnerability and Sex Work in Wales

Date - Thursday the 21st of September 2023

Location - Hybrid Event – Online and Faraday lecture theatre C Singleton Campus, Swansea University

About the Event - Dr Jordan Dawson (Swansea University), Dr Cheryl Allsop and Dr Helen Jones (University of South Wales) and Professor Debbie Jones (Swansea University) are delighted to invite you to a hybrid event that will discuss the findings of an AWPAC funded project that explored Police understanding and application of the concept of vulnerability in responding to the needs of sex workers in Wales. There will also be keynote presentations in the morning session from Dr Emily Cooper, Lancaster University and Hannah Wilcock from National Ugly Mugs.

The event will be of interest to police officers and staff, academics and researchers, sex work organisations and sex workers. The first half of the day will be an open session but in person spaces are limited to 35. However, online participation is unlimited. The afternoon will be by invitation and will focus on developing the training elements of the project.

Agenda

9.45 – 10 - Tea/coffee on arrival for those attending in person

10 – 10.15 - Welcome – Superintendent Ross Evans Dyfed Powys Police and Professor Debbie Jones co-chairs of the AWPAC network.

Superintendent Evans is the founding chair of the AWPAC - The All-Wales Policing and Academic Collaboration. In March 2022, Policing in Wales and the Wales Innovation Network formally agreed a collaborative arrangement for policing research in Wales, with a view to establishing a broader, evidence base for policing in Wales and to replicate similar successful arrangements in other parts of the UK.

10.15 – 10.30 – Dr Emily Cooper Lancaster University – ‘Effecting evidence-based change in police responses to vulnerability: reflections on academic-police partnerships’

Dr Emily Cooper is a Senior Lecturer at UCLan and is seconded part-time to the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP) as a Senior Research Fellow. Emily’s research interests centre on vulnerability, with particular expertise in the regulation of sex work and, more recently, fraud and VAWG. She has several years’ experience working within police forces on secondment, co-producing research with teams of academic and police staff in a range of topics in accordance with priority areas.

10.30 - 10.45 – Hannah Wilcock - National Ugly Mugs - ‘Vulnerability, policing and sex work’

Hannah joined NUM in March 2019 as a caseworker. She has worked with victims of crime for many years, specialising in supporting victims of sexual violence. She is a qualified independent sexual violence advisor (ISVA) and has previous experience of working for the police which gives her a great working knowledge of the criminal justice system, policing processes and the law. She uses her experience to lead NUM’s support services and will strive to improve practice, policy and procedure, ensuring sex workers receive the best level of service from NUM and beyond.

NUM:

National Ugly Mugs (NUM) is a pioneering, national organisation that provides greater access to justice and protection for sex workers who are often targeted by dangerous individuals and face obstacles to reporting, access to service and police protection. Those who harm sex workers offend against all of us!

10.45 – 11.00 – Q&A panel discussion

11 – 11.45 – Findings from the project and Q&A

11.45 - 12.30 - Lunch and networking for those attending in person

12.30 - 2.00 -Closed invited workshops

1. What next and application to policing practice in Wales

2.Development of future training – what should be included?

3.Future areas of research?

2.00 - 2.30 - DCC Dan Vajzovic - NPCC

Deputy Chief Constable Dan Vajzovic joined Bedfordshire Police in September 2022. Prior to this, he was working as the Assistant Chief Constable leading the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, a post he held since 2019. DCC Vajzovic is currently on secondment to Bedfordshire from Cambridgeshire Constabulary, where he was previously ACC. His other previous roles include ACC for the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Joint Protective Services.

DCC Vajzovic joined policing in 1997 after reading Chemical Engineering at Churchill College, Cambridge. During his more than 25 years of policing, DCC Vajzovic has been his force’s head of operations, the area commander for the city of Peterborough and has headed the force Professional Standards Department. His operational background is predominantly in crime investigation, having worked in serious and organised crime, public protection and volume crime environments.

Dan has led the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) working group developing policy and practice around prostitution and sex working since the autumn of 2017. He has also led NPCC working groups for the Sensitive Intelligence Network, the policing of air shows, and the police response to online CSE/A activist groups (OCAGs). Dan is responsible for overseeing the NPCC’s national undercover online capability to tackle CSE.

3.00-3.30 – Feedback to group and summary

Biographies of the research team:

Dr Jordan Dawson is a lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences, Swansea University. His doctoral research focused on male sex workers experiences of violence and otherwise harmful behaviours, and their subsequent reporting of these experiences. He has previously worked with the National Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP), where his research focused on adult safeguarding.

Dr Cheryl Allsop is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Wales. Her research focuses on cold case homicide, stranger rape and missing person cases and missing people more broadly including the various harms relating to missing especially homicide, exploitation, and vulnerability. She is the author of Cold Case Reviews: DNA, detective work and unsolved major crimes published by Oxford University Press and the co-editor of the forthcoming International Handbook of Homicide Investigations published by Routledge.

Dr Helen Jones is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Criminology, University of South Wales. Her research has focused on homicide, missing persons, forensic science and digital technologies, with a focus on qualitative research methods. She worked previously for Leicestershire Police, which included roles as the Protecting Vulnerable People Intelligence Analyst and, most recently, as a Review Officer, reviewing undetected homicides, stranger rapes and long-term missing persons.

Professor Debbie Jones is a Professor of Criminology and the current Head of the School of Social Sciences at Swansea University. She is a former Metropolitan Police Officer and current co-chair of the All-Wales Policing Academic Collaboration. She has researched the regulation of the sex industry for over a decade and centres her research more broadly on making higher education accessible to all through a Public Criminology lens.

The Project:

The project explores how police in Wales understand and apply the concept of vulnerability in responding to sex work-related issues and incidents. An online survey, developed with input from police partners, was distributed to all four Welsh forces. A total of 95 people responded to the survey.

The key findings of the research include:

• A varied understanding of sex work which broached themes of exploitation and vulnerability.

• The majority of respondents reporting that they had undertaken little, if any, training directly related to sex work.

• Approaches to sex work-related issues being broadly aligned to NPCC (2019) guidance on sex work and prostitution.

• The narratives of the participants revealing an acknowledgement of the complex barriers to effective engagement between the police and sex workers.

• A number of areas of practice, which show promise in more effectively supporting those involved in sex work.