Interview with Nathan Hutchinson, MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management

Can you tell us about your career before joining the Institute of Criminology?

I joined the MSt in Applied Criminology and Police Management (Police Executive Programme) in 2021 after around 16 years as a police officer and a career Detective. I'd always wanted to complete a master’s degree after studying History and Sociology as an undergraduate, but balancing a demanding policing career with raising three children meant the opportunity never quite came along.

When I discovered that Cambridge offered a master’s specifically designed for serving police leaders, allowing me to continue working while studying, I knew it was exactly the opportunity I'd been waiting for.

Why did you decide to study the Police Executive Programme at Cambridge?

Throughout my policing career I've always been fascinated by crime, why it happens, and which policing tactics genuinely make a difference. Police training rightly focuses on legislation, investigations and solving crime, but there's far less emphasis on understanding the social, psychological and economic factors that contribute to offending, or the scientific evidence about what actually reduces crime.

A friend of mine, Mark, was already studying on the programme and spoke very highly of it. He encouraged me to apply when my force was looking for candidates. Cambridge was only about an hour from where I lived, so it was an ideal opportunity to combine world-class study with a busy professional and family life.

How did the MSt expand your understanding of policing?

The course completely changed the way I think about policing.

A central theme is understanding victims, offenders and places through the principles of targeting, testing and tracking. Rather than relying solely on tradition or instinct, you learn how evidence-based policing uses rigorous scientific research to identify interventions that have been tested and shown to reduce crime and improve police legitimacy.

That was genuinely exciting. It introduced me to ideas and research that simply aren't covered in standard police training. Learning how to critically assess evidence, interpret data and evaluate operational tactics enables you to make far better-informed decisions about where resources should be deployed and which strategies are most likely to succeed.

One resource I found particularly valuable was the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix, which brings together decades of scientific research into policing interventions that

have been shown to work. Seeing proven experiments, many by Cambridge Scholars, translated into practical policing gave me confidence that evidence-based approaches can improve everyday operational decisions.

Studying with Professor’s Lawrence Sherman , Justice Tankebe and other internationally recognised academics was an exceptional experience. Professor Sherman helped pioneer the application of scientific methods, like those used in medicine, to policing and criminology. Prof. Tankebe is also a world leader in procedural justice and their evidence-based philosophy runs throughout the programme.

Ultimately, the greatest benefit of EBP is more effective crime reduction. Instead of continuing practices simply because "that's how we've always done it", police leaders can direct resources towards interventions with robust evidence behind them.

I'm also a strong supporter of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, which is a tool to measure the impact of crime severity using a weighted score system. Each offence is given a score, based on severity, harm or impact, and these are numerically counted to give an offender a score. This enables police forces to identify the offenders causing the greatest harm and the victims most at risk. By focusing resources where they can have the greatest impact, policing becomes both more effective and more efficient.

That matters now more than ever. Police services face increasing demand alongside finite resources, so it's essential that every pound invested delivers the greatest possible benefit to the public.

Can you summarise your MSt dissertation?

For my dissertation I designed a 1hr procedural justice (PJ) training package for frontline officers in a policing district, previously assessed as having the lowest PJ scores by a fellow student. This used the same proven marking scale. I measured the PJ levels of stop and search encounters before and after the 1hr training through assessing body worn video. The findings showed modest improvements in officers' interactions with the public following even after the 1 hr PJ training. This demonstrated that relatively simple changes in officer communication and behaviour can improve outcomes.

This reflects wider international research, including large-scale randomised trials, by Weisburd et al 2022 Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots | PNAS who delivered a 5-day training course which demonstrated that longer procedural justice training improves police legitimacy and public confidence.

The subject was particularly important to me because public trust in policing has been challenged in recent years and I wanted to do something about it. Maintaining

legitimacy depends not only on enforcing the law effectively, but on ensuring people experience policing as fair, respectful and impartial.

Procedural justice is built around four core principles: giving people a voice, making decisions neutrally, treating everyone with dignity and respect, and demonstrating trustworthy motives. When people believe they have been treated fairly, they are more likely to accept police decisions, comply with the law and view policing as legitimate.

Those principles are as relevant today as they were when Sir Robert Peel established the foundations of policing by consent nearly 200 years ago.

How have you applied what you learned since graduating?

Following the positive findings from my dissertation, my force incorporated procedural justice into stop and search training, and I developed training videos for frontline officers. Seeing the research translated into operational practice has been one of the achievements I'm most proud of.

Since then, I have been promoting evidence-based approaches across the teams I've led and beyond, particularly in Domestic Abuse where I previously led an offender management team. The course also fundamentally changed the way I think about performance. Rather than simply counting activities or outputs, I now place much greater emphasis on measuring outcomes and understanding whether an intervention actually achieved its intended effect.

Evidence-based policing gives leaders the tools to ask better questions: What works? Why does it work? How do we know? Those are the questions that ultimately lead to more effective, efficient, legitimate and accountable policing.

What advice would you give to someone considering the course?

I'd recommend it without hesitation. At the time I managed to get funding through the governments bursaries scheme and also achieved a Level 7 (Masters) in Strategic Management and leadership with the Chartered Management Institute which has also been really useful.

I often compare evidence-based policing to training as an electrician. Imagine being able to wire a building competently but never learning the science of electricity. That's how I sometimes felt about policing before studying criminology at Cambridge.

Police officers are highly skilled professionals, but throughout the course I found myself asking why we aren't routinely taught more about the science of crime reduction,

behavioural change and evidence-based practice and operations during our careers. Colleagues I met from the Prison Service on the Penology course felt the same.

The MSt fills that gap. It doesn't just make you a better student it makes you a better police officer and a better leader. It gives you the confidence to challenge assumptions, evaluate evidence critically and make decisions based on what has been shown to work.

For anyone who wants to improve policing, reduce crime more effectively and make better use of limited public resources, I can't recommend the programme highly enough.