Biography
Matt Bland was a crime analyst in UK policing for 15 years during which he studied on the Cambridge Institute of Criminology's MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management course. Subsequently he undertook his PhD research at the Institute and joined the faculty as a full-time lecturer between December 2019 and August 2024.
Matt has since moved on to the role of Chief Operating Officer for the Society of Evidence Based Policing, but continues to teach part-time on the MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management, and is an affiliated scholar at the Jerry Lee Institute for Experimental Criminology.
He is married to Louise, with whom he lives in Suffolk with four children and a labradoodle.
Research
Evidence Based Policing
Domestic Abuse
Algorithms in Policing
Randomised Controlled Trials
Data Mining
Publications
Bland, M., Ariel, B. & Kumar, S. (2023). Criminal records versus rehabilitation and expungement: a randomised controlled trial. J Exp Criminol (2023), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-023-09557-x
Bland, M. (2023). Excess Mortality, Sickness and Absence in the Police Workforce in England and Wales During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 17, 2023, paad017, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paad017
Sinclair, R., Bland, M., Savage, B. (2023). Dating hot spot to fraud hot spot: Targeting the social characteristics of romance fraud victims in England and Wales, Criminology & Public Policy, https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12629
Ariel, B., Bland, M. and Sutherland, A., 2022. Experimental designs. Sage.
Bland, M., Ariel, B. and Ridgeon, N. eds., 2022. The Crime Analyst's Companion. Springer Nature.
Bland, M., Weir, R., Adisa, O., Allen, K., Ferreira, J. and Maitra, D.R., 2022. Describing patterns of known domestic abuse among different ethnic groups. Frontiers in psychology, 13.
Bland, M., Leggetter, M., Cestaro, D. and Sebire, J., 2021. Fifteen minutes per day keeps the violence away: A crossover randomised controlled trial on the impact of foot patrols on serious violence in large hot spot areas. Cambridge journal of evidence-based policing, 5(3-4), pp.93-118.
Ariel, B., Sutherland, A. and Bland, M., 2021. The trick does not work if you have already seen the gorilla: how anticipatory effects contaminate pre-treatment measures in field experiments. Journal of experimental criminology, 17, pp.55-66.
Hiltz, N., Bland, M. and Barnes, G.C., 2020. Victim-offender overlap in violent crime: Targeting crime harm in a Canadian suburb. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, 4, pp.114-124.
Bland, M. & Ariel, B. (2020). Targeting Domestic Abuse with Police Data. Springer International Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54843-8
Bland M. (2020) Algorithms Can Predict Domestic Abuse, But Should We Let Them?. In: Jahankhani H., Akhgar B., Cochrane P., Dastbaz M. (eds) Policing in the Era of AI and Smart Societies. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50613-1_
Liggins, A., Ratcliffe, J.H. & Bland, M. Targeting the Most Harmful Offenders for an English Police Agency: Continuity and Change of Membership in the “Felonious Few”. Camb J Evid Based Polic 3, 80–96 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41887-019-00039-7
Ariel, B. and Bland, M. (2019), "Is Crime Rising or Falling? A Comparison of Police-Recorded Crime and Victimization Surveys", Deflem, M. and Silva, D.M.D. (Ed.) Methods of Criminology and Criminal Justice Research (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 24), Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 7-31.
Ariel, B., Bland, M., & Sutherland, A. (2017). ‘Lowering the threshold of effective deterrence’—Testing the effect of private security agents in public spaces on crime: A randomized controlled trial in a mass transit system. PLoS one, 12(12), e0187392.
Ariel B, Bland M, Sutherland A (2017) ‘Lowering the threshold of effective deterrence’—Testing the effect of private security agents in public spaces on crime: A randomized controlled trial in a mass transit system. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0187392. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187392
Bland, M., & Ariel, B. (2015). Targeting escalation in reported domestic abuse: Evidence from 36,000 callouts. International criminal justice review, 25(1), 30-53.
Teaching and Supervisions
Matt teaches on the Police Executive Program (MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management)
