Policing is no longer only about responding to crime after it happens. Increasingly, police are asked to step in early — to prevent harm before anyone has broken the law. This way of thinking often comes from public health, where the aim is to reduce risks across whole populations rather than deal with individual wrongdoing after the fact.

This shift has changed what police do and how they justify it. Officers may visit people at home, record incidents that are not crimes, or intervene because behaviour is seen as risky, upsetting, or potentially harmful in the future. These actions are usually well-intentioned and aimed at prevention, safeguarding, or harm reduction.

But this raises difficult questions. What does prevention mean if no crime has been committed? How does acting “just in case” sit with ideas like fairness, free speech, and being innocent unless proven guilty? And if public health works on populations, what happens when its logic is applied to individuals at the front door?

Thinking about policing in this way helps us see both the promise and the tension of early intervention: how it might reduce harm, but also how it can quietly reshape the boundaries between care, control, and consent in a democratic society.

This topic will be introduced by Dr Kyri Kotsoglou, Associate Professor at the University of Northumbria School of Law. Kyri is a Criminal Evidence and Criminal Law scholar with a special interest in evidence and proof and (analytical) legal theory.

Come and join the discussion

You are warmly invited to join us at The Telegraph, Orchard Street, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 3NY (behind the Central Station), for our next meeting on Tuesday 3rd February at 7pm.

See here for location.