Fellow: Dr Ioana Crivatu: Partner: Thames Valley Police; School/Dept: School of Psychology
Street sexual harassment is a widespread yet normalised, under-researched and under-policed issue, commonly dismissed from public protection strategies despite its foundational role in the continuum of sexual violence. To date, research, public focus, legislation and policies have routinely focused on victimisation in organisations and educational institutions, leaving gaps in understanding perpetrator behaviours, police responses, and situational contexts of street sexual harassment.
This Centre-UB Early Career Fellowship partners with Thames Valley Police, which has been running Operation Vigilant since 2019. Thames Valley Police place importance on proactively policing hotspots where street sexual harassment and associated predatory behaviours are most common, to prevent and disrupt behaviours before escalating into other serious sexual offences. While Operation Vigilant’s focus is on locations within the nighttime economy, such as the outside areas of pubs, bars, and nightclubs, the police officers also patrol and intervene in adjacent spaces and streets. However, targeted research is needed to deepen the understanding of street sexual harassment and predatory behaviours in public spaces—the what, who, when, why, how, and against whom.
The project will: a) map out and understand predatory behaviours and street sexual harassment in public spaces, including but not limited to nighttime economy hotspots; b) map out and understand the general public’s personal or witnessed experiences of street sexual harassment/predatory behaviours, and opinions on prevention and related policing the related policing; and c) build an evidence base to strengthen Operation Vigilant, through improving their training, practice, and operational decisions.
The aim is to develop an evidence base to inform the theory and practice of proactive prevention and disruption, in ways that better align with the realities of everyday street sexual harassment while accounting for the individual experiences and needs of the general public.