Matt Ashby

Lecturer in Crime Science

University College London

Biography

I am a lecturer in crime science at the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL). I am interested in crime analysis – particularly how crime concentrates in time and space – in crime prevention and in transport crime.

Interests

How crime concentrates in time and space
Crime analysis
How police can prevent crime
Problem-oriented policing
Crime on public transport

Education

PhD in Crime Science, 2016

University College London
MRes in Security Science, 2012

University College London
MSc in Crime Science, 2011

University College London
BA (Hons) in Politics with International Studies, 2003

University of Warwick

Recent Posts

Increases in crime-related demand are hitting some forces harder than others

One way to understand crime-related demands on police forces is to track ‘crime pressure’, a measure of investigative workload representing the number of crimes reported to a force per officer, weighted according to Office for National Statistics estimates of the relative severity of different crimes.

19 July 2021 7 min read Crime and justice chart of the week

Chart: Police cuts still being felt in most forces

The government this week announced that almost 9,000 police officers had been recruited in England and Wales as part of a plan to increase police numbers by 20,000 by 2023.

30 April 2021 1 min read Crime and justice chart of the week

Chart: Typical rape investigation times doubled between 2012 and 2018

The time taken for a typical rape case to be prosecuted in court increased only slightly from 2012 to 2018, but the time taken for police to investigate rapes and the CPS to decide whether to charge a suspect has more than doubled.

17 March 2021 1 min read Crime and justice chart of the week

Tutorial: Calculating disparities in stop and search

I recently published a report on how stop and search is used in London. Although the report contained lots of information, it was probably inevitable that people would focus on the figures for disparities in stop and search rates between ethnic groups.

10 December 2020 13 min read

Tutorial: How to stop hiding your research

This post first appeared on the #CrimComm Blog You’re a criminal-justice researcher and you’ve just published an article in a top journal. It was a lot of work: you spent months securing ethical approval, collecting data or negotiating access to secondary data, completing the analysis, writing up the results and responding to reviews.

5 August 2020 6 min read

Recent Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.

MPJ Ashby (2020). Stop and Search in London: July to September 2020.

MPJ Ashby (2020). The open-access availability of criminological research to practitioners and policy makers. Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

Preprint PDF Code Dataset DOI

MPJ Ashby (2020). Changes in Police Calls for Service During the Early Months of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic. Policing: a journal of policy and practice.

Preprint PDF Code Project DOI

MPJ Ashby (2020). Initial evidence on the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and crime in the United States. Crime Science.

Preprint PDF Code Dataset Project

A Sidebottom, S Kirby, N Tilley, R Armitage, Matt Ashby, K Bullock, G Laycock (2020). Implementing and sustaining problem-oriented policing: a guide.

See all publications

Recent & Upcoming Talks

Changes in police calls for service during the early months of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic

Presentation on changes in calls for service during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on my paper Changes in Police Calls for Service During the Early Months of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic.

8 December 2020 00:00 online

Three quarters of new criminological knowledge is hidden from policy makers

Presentation on the state of open access publishing in criminology, based on my paper The open-access availability of criminological research to practitioners and policy makers.

19 November 2020 00:00 online

Hot spots: how they form and ways to analyse them

20 October 2020 00:00 online

Problem solving at hotspots

10 March 2020 00:00 St George's Park, England

Indoors and outdoors: weather and the spatial displacement of crime

19 September 2019 00:00 Ghent, Belgium

Contact