Following a detailed stakeholder engagement, the Ethics Committee has been set up by the Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) and West Midlands Police (WMP). The Committee’s job will be to advise the PCC and Chief Constable on data science projects being proposed by WMP’s Data Analytics Lab.
The Lab is led by specially recruited data scientists and will develop programmes of work that use data more intelligently to help WMP prevent crime, allocate resources more efficiently and help it to do its job of keeping the public safe.
The Ethics Committee has been set up to help ensure that ethics and people’s rights are put at the heart of the Lab’s work. Using the Committee’ expertise, WMP will be in a better position to help people avoid crime and support the communities of the West Midlands.
How was the Ethics Committee recruited?
Following a formal application, shortlisting and interview process which involved shortlisting and interview panels with both male and female representation and expertise from West Midlands Police’s Diversity & Inclusion Team, we are delighted to have appointed people with a very diverse range of relevant skills and experiences.
All appointments having been made strictly on merit. The majority come from, live and/or work in the West Midlands, and there is a 50/50 split between men and women.
We used a specialist BAME recruitment agency to share our advert for the ethics committee vacancies across their networks, including different ethnic minority, single parents, disability, religious, sexual orientation and gender groups.
This was supplemented with adverts in national publications and the sharing of the advert at universities across the West Midlands, through the members of the PCC’s Strategic Policing & Crime Board and across the PCC’s social media.
Key contact
The policy and operations lead for ethics is Tom McNeil.
The Ethics Committee Board includes the Assistant Police and Crime Commissioner (Tom McNeil), Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer (Jonathan Jardine) and 14 Committee Members.
The board members are Anindya Banerjee, Malcolm Fowler, Peter Fussey, Jamie Grace, Janine Green, Jennifer Housego, Marion Oswald (Chair), Claire Paterson-Young, Tom Sorell, Derek Dempsey, Andrew Howes, Nathan Hodson, Simon Rogerson and Sian Thomas.
The biographies of those appointed can be found below.
Marion Oswald
Committee Chair
Marion is the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in Law at the University of Northumbr… Read more about Marion Oswald
Marion Oswald
Committee Chair
Marion is the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in Law at the University of Northumbria, an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, Chair of the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner and West Midlands Police Data Ethics Committee, a member of the National Statistician’s Data Ethics Committee, an executive member of the British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association and a member of the Council of Europe Working Group of Experts on Artificial Intelligence and Criminal Law. She is also joint law track chair of the Association of Computing Machinery Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (ACM FAT) Conference 2020.
Marion’s research focuses on the interaction between law and digital technology, and involves multi-disciplinary collaboration and doctrinal, empirical and conceptual methodologies. Building on her background as a practising lawyer within Government and technology companies, she has developed a particular specialism in the use of digital technologies and big data within policing and the wider public sector. She regularly writes, speaks and advises on the impacts of new technologies, and the legal, ethical and social issues raised by personal data sharing and the deployment of innovative technology in the public and private sectors, focusing upon administrative and public law and human rights issues. She has a particular interest in the use of information, Big Data and algorithms to solve public sector problems, and in the challenges to children’s best interests raised by our digital society.
Professor Anindya Banerjee
Committee Member
Professor Anindya Banerjee joined the Department of Economics in January 2008 as Prof… Read more about Professor Anindya Banerjee
Professor Anindya Banerjee
Committee Member
Professor Anindya Banerjee joined the Department of Economics in January 2008 as Professor in Economics. Before coming to Birmingham he was Professor at the European University Institute in Florence and Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Professor Banerjee received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.
His interests lie in time series econometrics, including factor models, and the econometrics of integrated panel data. He has recently been using his expertise in econometric modelling to look at the use of algorithmic methods in augmenting police decision making.
Malcolm Fowler
Committee Member
Seventy three and married with twin daughters and a grandson, Malcolm has had a stake… Read more about Malcolm Fowler
Malcolm Fowler
Committee Member
Seventy three and married with twin daughters and a grandson, Malcolm has had a stake in the West Midlands since moving to Birmingham over fifty years ago. For over forty seven years he was a criminal defence Solicitor practitioner and advocate. With Higher Rights of Audience since June 1995, he has since then undertaken much Crown Court advocacy to include jury trials and other sensitive and serious cases.
Malcolm has held many exacting voluntary posts, notably as President of the Birmingham Law Society, as Chair of the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, as Chair also of the national Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee and as a member of the Society’s Council and its Human Rights Committee. Since retiring he has continued with many voluntary activities touching upon close interests and resolute beliefs in criminal justice and penal reform. For about fifty years he has been a regular broadcaster and legal commentator on a host of criminal justice and allied topics.
Professor Peter Fussey
Committee Member
Pete Fussey is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at the Univers… Read more about Professor Peter Fussey
Professor Peter Fussey
Committee Member
Pete Fussey is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK, a department that is consistently ranked among the highest in the UK for research excellence. Professor Fussey’s main research interests focus on; surveillance, digital sociology, human rights, control and the city and has published widely across these areas. He is a director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP), and research director for a five-year large-scale ESRC project analysing the human rights implications of emerging technology, with particular focus on digital policing and surveillance practices in the US, UK, Brazil, Germany and India. His other work focuses on organised crime in the EU with particular reference to the trafficking of children for criminal exploitation (monograph Child Trafficking in the EU: Policing and protecting Europe’s most vulnerable published by Routledge in 2017).
Professor Fussey has also worked with and advised national and regional governments in the UK and Europe on a number of issues including the regulation of surveillance, public order policing and the security and social implications of urban mega-events. Most recently we have conducted collaborative work with a several national oversight bodies including the Investigatory Powers Commissioners Office.
He is also currently working with UN agencies on issues concerning human rights and digital technology and also leads the human rights strand of the UK’s national surveillance camera strategy.
Jamie Grace
Committee Member
Jamie Grace
Committee Member Jamie Grace
Jamie is currently Senior Lect… Read more about Jamie Grace
Jamie Grace
Committee Member
Jamie Grace
Committee Member Jamie Grace
Jamie is currently Senior Lecturer in Law in the Department of Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University, holding this post since January 2014. He is course leader of both the MA and LL.M in Applied Human Rights courses taught in his Department. He is an active researcher in the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, and a Fellow of the Sheffield Institute of Policy Studies, both part of Sheffield Hallam University.
He was previously Senior Lecturer in Law in the School of Law & Criminology at the University of Derby (with various roles from June 2007 until January 2014). In terms of his research, Jamie is a privacy law specialist, and chiefly teaches on human rights issues connected with policies in criminal justice, welfare and education.
Jennifer Housego
Committee Member
Jennifer joined Essex Police in May 2015, to lead on digital transformation. Prior to… Read more about Jennifer Housego
Jennifer Housego
Committee Member
Jennifer joined Essex Police in May 2015, to lead on digital transformation. Prior to that Jennifer spent 9 years as a Senior Manager in the NCA having joined SOCA when it first started on the 1st April 2006. Jennifer worked in the NCA Intelligence Hub as Head of Open Source, as well as leading the Picture of Threat Team, the Drugs Intelligence desk and Industry Alerts.
Jennifer also spent a couple of years in SOCA’s Cyber Unit and looking after Digital Forensics as well as Information management. Jennifer has a strong digital background, having worked in Open Source, Cyber and Digital Forensics at Senior Management level, and is Deputy Chair of the NPCC Open Source and Information Working group. She also chairs an Open Source Intelligence sub group for the Forensic Regulator. Jennifer has an Executive Masters in Intelligence, Analytics and Media and is an associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.
In addition Jennifer currently holds an Honours Degree in Law a Post Graduate Diploma in Management and is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. She is the Eastern regional lead for 3i, which holds the ethics portfolio, and leads on regional convergence opportunities for the Chief Constable of Suffolk.
Claire Paterson-Young
Committee Member
Claire Paterson-Young completed her Doctorate in Criminology, exploring the social im… Read more about Claire Paterson-Young
Claire Paterson-Young
Committee Member
Claire Paterson-Young completed her Doctorate in Criminology, exploring the social impact of custody on children and young people. Within this research, Claire designed a social impact measurement framework to measure the impact of custodial services on children and young people. Throughout her career, Claire has been employed in several roles such as Lecturer in Criminology, Child Sexual Exploitation Coordinator, Restorative and Youth Justice Service Lead and Youth Intensive Support Coordinator.
She has experience working with multi-agency teams and partnership initiatives, engaging with a number of different senior stakeholders across different sectors. This includes working with the National Crime Agency, Police Scotland and various Local Authorities and Voluntary Organisations in the United Kingdom. Further to this, Claire owns her own business offering consultancy and training in Child Sexual Exploitation, Restorative Justice and Social Impact Measurement.
Professor Tom Sorell
Committee Member
Tom Sorell is Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Warwick University. He has long… Read more about Professor Tom Sorell
Professor Tom Sorell
Committee Member
Tom Sorell is Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Warwick University. He has long- standing interests in the ethics of security and policing, as well as the ethics of data analytics. He is also involved in research on machine learning in cancer diagnostics. He is the editor (with Kat Hadjimatheou and John Guelke) of Security Ethics (Routledge). He has led the EU-funded DETECTER FP7 Security project and assisted in leading its successor, SURVEILLE. From 2013-2016 he was ESRC Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellowship in the ethics of counter-terrorism and the fight against organised crime.
He is a member of the Biometrics and Forensic Ethics Group of the Home Office, and the Strategic Hub on Organized Crime at RUSI. He is the author or editor of 20 books and the author or co-author of 150 peer-reviewed articles.
Derek Dempsey
Committee Member
Derek Dempsey is Founder and Director of Empyrric, an independent consultancy focused… Read more about Derek Dempsey
Derek Dempsey
Committee Member
Derek Dempsey is Founder and Director of Empyrric, an independent consultancy focused on the use of AI within Financial Crime and Compliance as well its broader impact across society.
Empyrric works with businesses to support their use of data, analytics and AI, relying on years of experience working with clients around the world, leveraging new analytical and machine learning techniques and business expertise. Empyrric also works with organisations on new technologies to ensure they are used effectively, ethically and to provide benefit to society.
Derek has worked in Artificial intelligence and Advanced Analytics for over 20 years and is a specialist in the development and application of predictive analytics for fraud detection, compliance monitoring and risk solutions. He has worked across multiple industries and lines of business and has a wealth of experience in the development, deployment and effective use of advanced techniques such as neural networks, logistic regression, decision trees, clustering, network analytics, fuzzy logic, outlier techniques and other machine learning methods.
Derek worked for FICO from 2007 to 2019 in several roles including management of the custom fraud analytics team, Principal Consultant in the Advisors Practice, and Director of a Data Science Centre of Excellence. In these roles he delivered a range of successful projects in finance, government, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, on-line retail and other areas. He was responsible for the development of several new financial crime solutions to add to the FICO portfolio.
Prior to joining FICO Derek lead a number of teams using advanced analytics and AI methods for fraud detection solutions worldwide. Within these roles he was responsible for advanced analytics and AI research, development and delivery. Derek has several patents in the use of neural networks, profiling techniques, solution architectures and other advanced methods.
A Philosophy graduate from the Christ’s College, Cambridge, Derek holds an MSc in Cognitive Science and Intelligent Computing from Westminster University, London. Formerly a lecturer at West London College where he taught philosophy and mathematics for several years, Derek lectured at McMaster University, Canada and subsequently at the London School of Economics (LSE) and University College, London (UCL).
Jonathan Jardine
Committee Member
Jonathan Jardine has been Chief Executive of the West Midlands Office of the Police a… Read more about Jonathan Jardine
Jonathan Jardine
Committee Member
Jonathan Jardine has been Chief Executive of the West Midlands Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner since 2015, having joined West Midlands Police Authority in 2008.
Previously he worked with local government, the military, academia and the health sector. He has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Wales, has studied at the University of Illinois, and completed the College of Policing Strategic Command Course in 2020.
He has been Chair of the Association of Policing and Crime Chief Executives since 2022.
Nathan Hodson
Committee Member
Nathan Hodson is a mental health doctor at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Foundation T… Read more about Nathan Hodson
Nathan Hodson
Committee Member
Nathan Hodson is a mental health doctor at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust and an Academic Clinical Fellow in the Unit of Mental Health and Wellbeing at University of Warwick. He researches medical ethics with a particular interest in families and collisions of rights and is a director at the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. He has consulted for Save The Children International and the Shadow Minister for Mental Health. He holds a masters in health policy from Harvard School of Public Health where he particularly focused on the intersection of ethics and behavioural science.
Professor Simon Rogerson
Committee Member
Simon Rogerson became Europe’s first Professor in Computer Ethics in 1998 and in 20… Read more about Professor Simon Rogerson
Professor Simon Rogerson
Committee Member
Simon Rogerson became Europe’s first Professor in Computer Ethics in 1998 and in 2010 became lifetime Professor Emeritus in Computer Ethics at De Montfort University, UK. He was the founding Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR), launching it in 1995 at the first ETHICOMP conference which he conceived and co-directed until 2013. He was the founder and editor until December 2021 of the Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. He sits on several international ICT-related advisory boards and has served on governing bodies in education and ICT.
His early career was in industry as a technical software developer. The industrial links have remained through his pioneering work with the professional bodies of IMIS, BCS and ACM. His most important research focuses on providing rigorously grounded practical tools and guidance to computing practitioners. Recently, he has been writing the Ethical Digital Technology trilogy for Taylor & Francis. The first two books are: The Evolving Landscape of Ethical Digital Technology (September 2021) and Ethical Digital Technology in Practice (August 2022). For his leadership and research achievements in the computer and information ethics interdisciplinary field he was awarded the fifth IFIP-WG9.2 Namur Award in 2000 and the ACM SIGCAS Making a Difference Award in 2005.
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