Unmasking the impact: how did the coronavirus pandemic affect police intelligence in the United Kingdom?

Abstract

ABSTRACT At present, there is no research available that has explored how the coronavirus pandemic affected intelligence work. Understanding this is vital as any factor that may increase the likelihood of intelligence gaps is worthy of examination because they are frequently identified as a major causal factor of the more harmful issue of intelligence failures within law enforcement. Recent research (Marani, et al, 2021) states that despite the pandemic abating, the risk of further global incidents remains. Therefore, lessons need to be identified to reduce potential gaps and failures occurring during future pandemics. We seek to achieve this by asking how Covid-19 affected intelligence work within UK policing by interviewing fifteen intelligence personnel from one police service. Using a framework from the practice of knowledge management (KM) we analyze how the pandemic affected the processes, technology, individual and organisational willingness to share intelligence, workloads, location, and structure of intelligence delivery (Abrahamson and Goodman-Delaunty, 2014). Findings indicate that all were negatively impacted by changes in working priorities, increased demand on analysts, and the ability of the police to gather intelligence from covert human intelligence sources and partner agencies. Such implications are discussed in the context of wider intelligence literature and future preparedness.