About Us

Dr. Halford has a long career as a highly effective academic collaborator who spent over a decade as his police services deputy director, and subsequently co-director of academic and research collaboration. At a national level he was a member of both the N8 Policing Research Consortium and Open University Centre for Policing Research and Learning. 

Dr. Halford is a prolific researcher and publisher who has published 9 Q1 journals and several book chapters in just the last 2 years. He is presently employed as an associate researcher and is actively conducting studies in areas including the impact of COVID-19 on crime and policing, criminal and geographical profiling, the investigation of missing children, evidence based policing and counter terrorism. 

In total he has been involved in over 45 academic research projects over the past 10 years. Over his career he has also secured over £3.5m in funding from both academic and government funding streams and has experience of developing many policing educational courses and multiple large programs of education for police detectives, which have been delivered to police officers nationally in the United Kingdom. 

As a result, he has significant knowledge, awareness of, and ability to merge contemporary strategic, operational and tactical best practice into police training and education.

· PhD in Forensics and Applied Sciences

· MA in Terrorism and Security Studies

1.   Halford, E (2021) Criminal Justice, Risk and Vulnerability in Forensic Psychology, Crime and Policing: Key Issue and Practical Debates. Ed: Corteen, K., Steele, R,.Cross, R., & McMannus, M.

2.   Halford, E and McManus, M (2021) Policing Serious Violent and Sexual Offending in Forensic Psychology, Crime and Policing: Key Issue and Practical Debates. Ed: Corteen, K., Steele, R., Cross, R., & McMannus, M.

3.   Halford, E., Dixon, A. & Farrell, G (2022) Anti-social behaviour in the coronavirus pandemic. Crime Sci 11, 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-022-00168-x

4.   Halford E (2022) An Exploration of the Impact of COVID-19 on Police Demand, Capacity and Capability. Social Sciences. 2022; 11(7):305. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070305

5.   Boulton, L., Phoenix, j., Halford, E & Sidebottom, A (2022) Return home interviews with children who have been missing: an exploratory analysis, Police Practice and

Research, DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2022.2092480

6.   Halford, E. (2022) A Case Study of Police-identified Foraging Burglary Offenders. J Police Crim Psych. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-022-09512-y

7.   Halford, E (2022) Linking Foraging Domestic Burglary: An Analysis of Crimes Committed Within Police-Identified Optimal Forager Patches. J Police Crim Psych. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-022-09497-8

8.   Halford, E and Smith, J (2022) Operation provide: a multi-agency response to increasing police engagement in cases of intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Police Practice and Research, 23:5, 600-613, DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2022.2033621

9.   Halford, E and Davies, A (2021) Safeguarding Children: Early Trends of a Police School-Based Intervention Programme, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 15, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 2269–2280, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paab046

10. Halford, E., Dixon, A., Farrell, G. et al. (2020) Crime and coronavirus: social distancing, lockdown, and the mobility elasticity of crime. Crime Sci 9, 11 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00121-w

11. Aiden Sidebottom, Laura Boulton, Ella Cockbain, Eric Halford & Jessica Phoenix (2020) Missing children: risks, repeats and responses, Policing and Society, 30:10, 1157-1170, DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2019.1666129

12. Clough, G., Adams, A., and Halford, E (2017). Evidence Cafés and Practitioner Cafés supported by online resources: A route to innovative training in practice based approaches. European Police Science and Research Bulletin: Special Conference Edition No. 3(3) pp. 115–122.

· Strategic and Executive Policing

· Operational Commend

· Criminal Investigation

· Police Leadership

· Child Protection

· The impact of COVID-19 on crime and policing

· Crime prevention and reduction

· Criminal profiling

· Geographical profiling

· The investigation of missing children

· Counter Terrorism

· Evidence based policing