Professor Jason Roach joins the Centre as a Visiting Professor

Professor Jason Roach joins the Centre as a Visiting Professor.

Here Jason tells us more about his experience and research interests.

Hello everyone, I am Jason Roach, Professor of Psychology and Policing, a Chartered Psychologist, and Director for the Applied Criminology and Policing Centre, at the University of Huddersfield. Well that’s the day job, but I am very proud to say that I have recently been bestowed the great honour of becoming a Visiting Professor at CPRL.

I have been working in academia for almost twenty years now, previously I worked for the UK Home Office, but began my working life in mental health and psychiatric services from 1992-2001.

My main areas of research interest are; police and offender decision making (especially in criminal investigations); crime prevention (using behavioural science approaches such as ‘Nudge’), violent crime (including child homicide), and the Self-Selection Policing approach, which I co-invented with Professor Ken Pease, which identifies how serious criminals can be uncovered by the small crimes they commit (Roach and Pease, 2016).

To date I have co-written and co-edited four books and I am just about to submit a manuscript for my first solo book, entitled ‘Practical Psychology for Police’, which will hopefully be published in March 2022. I have published over 40 academic papers and book chapters for edited works. I am also Editor-in Chief for the Police Journal. 

So, why become a Visiting Professor at CPRL and what contribution do I think I can make to its work and further development? To answer the first question, it isn’t for the money I can tell you, it is simply because I want to be part of the diverse and forward-thinking policing research and training embodied by CPRL. 

As for what contribution I can make to CPRL, well that obviously remains to be seen, but I hope to add my particular brand of knowledge and experience to the work with partnership forces that CPRL staff are currently engaged in, for example in the areas of crime prevention and criminal investigation, but also in other ways including bidding for external research and consultancy funding, presenting at annual conferences, working with CPRL postgraduate students, and contributing to police training development. 

I always work under the mantra of ‘research is something done with, not to, police’ and I believe that CPRL share that value. 

Professor Jason Roach