Courses focus on community policing and empowerment in Northern Ireland

The Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL), working with Associate Lecturer Laurence Knell, has published four more free courses focusing on community policing and empowerment. This work is part of an ongoing collaboration with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), bringing the number of PSNI Community engagement courses on OpenLearn to seven, with another four now commissioned.

The success of these courses is reflective of strong stakeholder engagement and the development of a real partnership with the PSNI.

We are pleased that the latest four modules have been added to our ever-growing portfolio of learning for policing. We are now working on another four courses due to be published later this year.

Paul Walley
CPRL Director of Learning

Latest courses

The latest courses cover a diverse range of topics:

Justice, fairness and mediation
This course covers two specific approaches to justice and fairness – restorative justice and mediation.

Empowering communities
This course looks at community empowerment and how to overcome barriers to achieving empowerment.

Engaging with youth and young people
This course looks at how police engage with youth and young people and how this might be done differently.

Exploring evidence-based policing
This is designed as an introductory course in evidence-based practice (EBP). It reflects on ways EBP influences communities.

This article was first published on the CPRL website. Click here to read the original article.

Upcoming Events

Jul 16

Guest lecture: Fraud, Data and Emerging Risks

Thursday, July 16, 2026 - 14:00 to 15:30

Online on MS Teams

This guest lecture with Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, will provide an overview of the types of fraud currently causing the greatest harm to society and examine how advances in AI are likely to affect fraud cases in the future.

Sep 2

Caring Feminisms Across Borders Conference

Wednesday, September 2, 2026 - 09:00 to Friday, September 4, 2026 - 17:00

University of Donja Gorica, Oktoih 1, Podgorica 81000, Montenegro

This academic conference hopes to draw feminist scholars, activists and communities together to consider what caring feminism across borders might mean now and for the future.