Policing Innovation, Enterprise and Learning Centre
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The Purpose of PIEL
The purpose of the new international collaboration is to drive progressive change in policing, inspired by the founding Peelian tenets of community-led policing by consent, with a mission for a renaissance of policing in a 21st century context: to reset the best of the past within a more progressive future.
The approach focuses on enabling community policing by consent, as a co-productive relationship between citizens and agencies, working together for the common goal of the prevention of crime. The aim is to offer a space for all to come together to incubate a future-orientated vision for progressive policing that can enable community policing by consent, trust and legitimacy.
How PIEL Works
Policing is too important to be about just what the police do. Policing is a collective effort to make communities safer by working together. PIEL drives innovative enterprise and learning by bringing together professional, academic and community thinkers in a collaborative space to listen, co-problematise and co-produce insights, targeting real-world problems and re-imagining prototype policing of the future. PIEL brings communities and agencies together in one place to jointly design creative, sustainable solutions: as a policing Silicon Valley.
Policing is too important to be about just what the police do. Policing is a collective effort to make communities safer by working together. PIEL drives innovative enterprise and learning by bringing together professional, academic and community thinkers in a collaborative space to listen, co-problematise and co-produce insights, targeting real-world problems and re-imagining prototype policing of the future. PIEL brings communities and agencies together in one place to jointly design creative, sustainable solutions: as a policing Silicon Valley.
PIEL is an International Centre, based in the UK, with a large global network covering several continents, offering diverse and rich expertise across many areas of policing. We warmly invite international academic, professional, community and Government commissioning, so if you are seeking international calibre research, talk to us at PIEL.
Email Professor John Coxhead at j.coxhead@uel.ac.uk.
Centre Directors
Director (interim): Professor John Coxhead
Professor John Coxhead is a Keele graduate and a leading pracademic, with over 30 years' experience in policing. He is a professor of policing innovation and learning, winner of two Queen's Awards for Innovation in Police Learning and Development and founder of the UK Innovation in Policing Competition. As well as being a regular journal peer reviewer, he is a columnist for Police Professional, the UK's biggest-selling policing publication. John's career has entailed working with Europol, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate.
Co -Director: Ruwan Uduwerage Perara
Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera is a former British police officer of British and Sri Lankan descent, a founding member and the first elected General Secretary to the National Black Police Association (1999-2003), a former national and international police trainer, and advisor and campaigner in the field of equality & diversity, and community engagement issues. As the policing diverse communities manager for the College of Policing (2003-2007), Ruwan was an adviser on equality, diversity and community engagement issues for the National Centre for Policing Excellence. Ruwan was part of a small team, tasked by the National Police Chiefs' Council and the Home Office to research the police response to the inter-ethnic civil disorders.
Co-Director: Charles Crichlow
Charles D Crichlow is currently the programme leader for BSc Professional Policing Studies Pre-Join and Top-up degrees at the University of East London. He served for 30 years in Greater Manchester Police where during the 1990s he developed a passion for community policing and issues of fairness in policing in general. He completed his Master's degree in Crime Law and Society (Criminology) in 2008 at the University of Manchester. In 2009, he was commissioned by the National Black Police Association to conduct a 10th Anniversary internal review of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report, which was the catalyst for the commissioning of the Smith (2012) Report into Disproportionality in Police Professional Standards. On retirement from policing (2020), Charles was awarded the Queens Policing Medal (QPM) for services to policing.
Deputy Directors
Deputy Director Dr Emma Cunningham
Emma Cunningham's background is in politics, feminism and criminology, which inform her teaching, research and community interest areas. She has taught police officers, undergraduates and postgraduates, and was involved in the England-Africa Partnership with education and policing in Rwanda with British Council Funding. She has taught Understanding Domestic and Sexual Violence, Victims Rights and Restorative Justice and Victims and Offenders. Emma was a trustee and management member in the community on young people's projects and domestic violence support agencies. She worked with colleagues on a police crime commissioner-funded project to explore early intervention in domestic violence cases involving school children, called Operation Encompass.
Deputy Director Dr Nadia Habashi
Dr Nadia Habashi FRSA is strategic academic lead and lead for policing research in the Department of Criminology and Policing at the University of East London. During the period 2018-2020 she led the review into allegations of institutional racism at the Westway Trust, on behalf of Tutu Foundation UK (TFUK). Dr Habashi has a proven track record in championing and advocating on issues of race and inclusion. During the period 2002-2013 she worked in the following Government Departments, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) and Ministry of Justice (MOJ). She uses her considerable research, drafting skills and knowledge of the criminal justice system on a range of initiatives where she has championed and advocated on issues of inclusion and race. She has a PhD in Race and Participatory Governance and is an expert in race and the use of community engagement to improve performance of Criminal Justice Agencies.
Honorary and Visiting posts at PIEL
Associate Professor Daniel Ash (UK)
Senior Lecturer in Criminology and the REF Sociology research lead at the University of Gloucester. Dr Ash was a serving police officer for twenty years and conducts extensive police practice research, including the use of data science.
Honorary Professor Susannah Fish, OBE, QPM, MBA. (UK)
Susannah Fish, PhD (Hons) is a graduate of the London School of Economics, and former Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. Dr Fish received an OBE for her services to policing in 2008 and the Queen’s Police Medal in 2016. Holding an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Nottingham, Sue has been a leading voice for change in challenging policing culture, particularly the ‘toxic culture of sexism’. She was awarded Law Enforcement Upstander of the Year in the National Hate Crime Awards in 2016 for her pioneering work to make misogyny a hate crime.
Honorary Professor Terry O’Connell, OAM (Australia)
Terry O’Connell, PhD (Hons) has and remains a global pioneer in restorative policing and restorative justice based in New South Wales, Australia. Terry adapted the New Zealand model of family group conferencing and has been a major influence in spreading restorative justice throughout the world. He is the former director of Real Justice Australia, a division of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), a former senior sergeant with the Wagga Wagga Police Service with 30 years’ experience in law enforcement, and was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship study tour in Canada, USA, South Africa and the UK.
Professor Dilip K. Das (USA)
Professor Das is a Professor of Criminal Justice, Coppin University, Baltimore and is a Founding President of the International Police Executive Symposium, which is a government registered not-for-profit educational corporation, representing 60 countries covering a broad range of topics from police education to corruption, with regular meetings held throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Associate Professor Kelly Sundberg (Canada)
Dr Kelly Sundberg is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Justice, and Policy Studies at Mount Royal University, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, and a Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Prior to commencing his academic career, Professor Sundberg worked for over fourteen years for the Government of Canada in various border security, policy development, and advisory roles.
Professor Dimpal Rava (India)
Professor Raval is Dean of Extension & Distance Learning Division, Senior Faculty of Law at School of Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice and Former Head, Department of Law at Rashtriya Raksha University, Lavad, Dahegam, Gujarat, India.
Honorary Professor Niven Rennie (Scotland)
Niven Rennie, a former Chief Superintendent, is Director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, which is a national centre of expertise funded by the Scottish Government with an annual budget of a million pounds, from where he advises organisations around the world on tackling violence. The Unit's approach, which has seen Scotland reduce homicides by 39% – their lowest level since 1976 – emphasises a holistic partnership between health, education, social work and law enforcement agencies and not just a focus on police arrests.
Professor Wendell C. Wallace (St. Augustine)
Dr Wallace is Deputy Dean for Marketing, Distance and Outreach and teaches at the Criminology and Criminal Justice Unit at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Dr. Wallace is also a Barrister who has been called to the Bar in both England and Wales and Trinidad and Tobago as well as a certified mediator with the Mediation Board of Trinidad and Tobago.