Research
My research tests one central argument: legitimacy runs on two tracks that move together. How officers experience fairness inside their own organisation shapes how they exercise discretion with the public (Bradford and Tankebe's twin-track model). I test this empirically, mostly through FOI-obtained data and complaints analysis.
My work examines the legitimacy infrastructure inside policing: the systems, cultures, technologies and relationships that shape whether organisations are experienced as fair, trusted and accountable.
How I research
FOI data · Complaints data · Documentary analysis · Qualitative research · Procedural justice theory · Comparative analysis
ORCID | Google Scholar | ResearchGate
Current research
AI deployment and governance: a national Freedom of Information study of how police forces are deploying AI, and whether the governance, impact and safeguards around it are keeping pace.
AI in police complaint handling: a study of how AI might be utilised in complaint handling and decision-making.
NHS monitoring of psychiatric medication: a national study of all NHS mental health trusts exploring whether the effective monitoring of medication is occurring and the link between lack of monitoring and higher patient mortality rates.
Police use of AI
Can a machine say sorry? AI, dispute resolution and restorative justice in public complaints
Police complaints are rising, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools are arriving in professional standards departments faster than the rules that govern them; drawing on restorative justice, procedural justice research and online dispute resolution, Paul Ford argues that AI should take on the paperwork of complaints so that people have more time for the human conversation at their heart, and proposes a legitimacy impact assessment for any force considering it.
Signed, sealed and not delivered: What the Met’s own paperwork reveals about its Palantir pilot.
The Data Protection Impact Assessment and Equality Impact Assessment behind the Metropolitan Police Service’s Palantir pilot show a force that authorised the collection of its own officers’ political opinions and sex life data, went live before its own ethics review had reported, and never actually signed off its own equality assessment.
Automated Suspicion: Algorithmic Workforce Surveillance and the Erosion of Internal Legitimacy in the Metropolitan Police Service (Ford 2026)
What happens when workforce surveillance changes the relationship between organisation and officer? Tests the Met's Palantir workforce-monitoring pilot against procedural justice theory, using the Met's own impact assessments obtained under FOI. Also published in Policing Insight.
The Copilot Constable: Generative AI, Professional Judgement and Internal Legitimacy in Policing (Ford 2026)
What happens to professional judgement when AI starts drafting police narratives? Asks whether officers using generative AI to draft statements and reports still exercise judgement, or become operators of a system.
Legitimacy and culture
A Covenant Without Teeth: Internal Legitimacy, Occupational Mental Health and the Limits of the UK Police Covenant (Ford 2026)
Policing legitimacy research has traditionally examined how members of the public come to regard police authority as rightful. This paper argues that legitimacy is equally an internal property of police organisations, and that its absence carries measurable human costs
Beyond the Business Case: Reframing EDI as Legitimacy Infrastructure in Policing (Ford 2026)
Can EDI be understood as part of the infrastructure that creates organisational legitimacy? Argues that fairness and inclusion are legitimacy infrastructure, not a reputational exercise, with a worked example from the Casey Review.
Building Legitimacy from the Inside: Ethnic Minority Familiarisation Programmes in Armed Policing (Benning and Ford, 2026)
Treats representativeness in armed specialisms as a legitimacy issue, not only a workforce one.
"It's not like you're delivering Amazon packages": older victims' perspectives on police response (West, Satchell, Ford and Serfaty, 2024), Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice
Shows how officer conduct in the moment shapes whether victims experience a response as fair.
Complaints and accountability
Legitimacy Under Two Roofs: Citizen Complaints Against Counter-Terrorism and Firearms Command Policing Compared (Ford and Benning 2026)
Tests the twin-track model against complaints data from two specialist commands.
Dialogue, Legitimacy, and the "Power Few": Citizen Complaints Against Counter-Terrorism Policing in London (Ford 2021)
Examines whether a small number of officers or incidents drive a disproportionate share of complaints.
Silenced by Design: Voice, Legitimacy and the Failure of the NHS Mental Health Complaints System (Ford 2026)
A comparative analysis with direct lessons for how police complaints systems build or erode trust.
Counter-terrorism
Collaborative Approaches to Countering Terrorism (Frumkin and Ford, 2023), in A Research Agenda for Terrorism Studies, Edward Elgar
Argues that CT policing fails where police, communities, academics and partners work in silos.
Commission my research
I undertake:
independent research
organisational reviews
evidence reviews
FOI-based research
legitimacy and culture assessments
independent evaluations
research partnerships
conference and practitioner briefings