Background: The UK’s College of Policing is part of a government-initiated network of independent What Works Centres, which aim to improve the use of high-quality evidence in policy and practitioner decision making. The College of Policing (with the Economic and Social Research Council), co-funded an ambitious programme of work with a consortium of UK universities, led by University College London, to identify all systematic reviews with a crime-reduction focus. The systematic reviews were quality assessed and information was extracted using a framework developed by the academics focusing on the effect, mechanism, moderator, implementation and economic cost (EMMIE) of the intervention under review. The College, using the EMMIE framework, created the first crime-reduction focused online tool allowing users to access and use the best-available research in their endeavours to reduce crime.

Objective: This presentation will introduce the audience to the Crime Reduction Toolkit and will describe the ways in which users’ voices, from across the crime-reduction sector, were incorporated into the design and functionality of the Tool. It will include the opportunity to discuss and consider some of the challenges faced by the development team in:
• balancing accuracy of research findings with user requests for simplicity;
• meeting the needs of diverse groups of users from charity workers to police and politicians;
• testing the Toolkit; and,
• helping people to use the Toolkit in operational work and decision making.