Speaker biographies

Judith Gillespie

Judith Gillespie joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1982. Having achieved the Baton of Honour during her initial training Judith went on the rise steadily through the ranks gaining a wide range of experience in various roles, including operational policing in Greater Belfast and Newtownards, Traffic Branch, Staff Officer to Chief Officers, co-ordinator of Child Abuse and Rape Enquiry Units and Head of Drugs Squad.

Judith was the first female officer from the RUC/PSNI to attend the Strategic Command Course at Bramshill and the first female Assistant Chief Constable within the PSNI. In this role Judith established the new Criminal Justice Department and led on military withdrawal as ACC Rural.

On 1 June 2009 Judith was appointed Deputy Chief Constable with responsibility for leading on Professional Standards, Legal Services, Process Improvement, Cross Border Co-operation and Corporate Governance.

Academic successes include the Scotvec Prize, awarded to the top student on the HNC in Police Studies, a BA Honours degree in 1992 in Public Policy and Administration, and a Masters in Applied Criminology from Cambridge University in 2005.

Judith received an OBE in the Birthday Honours List, June 2009.

Judith was appointed Acting Chief Constable in August 2009 and remained in this post until the appointment of Matt Baggott as Chief Constable on the 22 September 2009.

Jonathan Hughes

Jonathan is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Professional Ethics at Keele, where he has worked since it was founded in 2002. He was its Director between 2005 and 2009, and has previously lectured in Philosophy at Keele and in Government at the University of Manchester, where he also obtained his PhD. His current research is focused on the ethics of policing and criminal justice and includes work in progress on conscientious objection in policing, ethnic and racial profiling, and the investigation and prosecution of old crimes. Previous research includes work in political philosophy, the ethics of risk and precaution, and resource allocation.

Jonathan developed and is Director of Keele's MA in the Ethics of Policing and Criminal Justice. He also teaches on a variety Keele's range of MA programmes in professional ethics. Among the short courses he has designed are one- and two-day programmes on police ethics and the ethics of prisons research. He is editor and co-author of the European Textbook on Ethics in Research, awarded under a competitive tender from the European Commission.

Al Hutchinson

In 2001, after a 34 year career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Assistant Commissioner (retired) Al Hutchinson accepted a position as Chief of Staff for the Northern Ireland Policing Oversight Commissioner. The Oversight Commissioner was a position established in 2000 to oversee changes to policing in Northern Ireland, as recommended by the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (Patten Commission). Al was subsequently appointed as the Oversight Commissioner from January 2004 until June 2007, the end of the mandate. He then accepted an appointment as the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and commenced his position on 6^th November 2007, succeeding (now) Baroness Nuala O’Loan. Originally from Canada, and now a resident of Northern Ireland, Mr Hutchinson is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa (BA) and of Queen’s University in Belfast (MBA).

Adrian Lee

Adrian Lee joined Greater Manchester Police in 1985. He was latterly Divisional Commander for South Manchester Division, which was the force’s largest division, with unique challenges. Its geography includes Wythenshaw, the largest housing estate in Europe, and areas such as Moss Side and Longsight generating tough inner-city policing issues such as gang violence and gun crime - as a result he is an experienced firearms and public order incident commander. He has led a number of initiatives to engage with communities in inner city deprived areas to jointly solve long standing problems, for example the Manchester Multi Agency Gang Strategy.

He joined Staffordshire Police as Assistant Chief Constable (Crime and Operations) in December 2003 with responsibility for: crime support, criminal justice administration, the operations division and the communications centre. He was appointed as Deputy Chief Constable of Staffordshire in December 2006. He was part of the ACPO team when the force was recognised as one of the best performing forces in the country and helped lead the strategic change to the current focus on the trust and confidence of communities in their police force. He took up his current post as Chief Constable of Northamptonshire on 12^th October 2009.

Adrian is the Lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers on Professional Ethics and is contributing to the work on Leadership within the Police Service by leading work on a new Executive Development Programme.

He is a graduate of the Gregorian University in Rome and Manchester University with a B Phil in Philosophy, an LLB (Hons), an MA in Management and an M.Phil. in Police Ethics. He is interested in developing the police service’s thinking on the influence of a sense of ‘vocation’ to performance and service delivery.

John McNeill

Professor John McNeill was appointed by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill as the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland in July and took up office on 17 August 2009. He provides independent scrutiny of the way the police handle non-criminal complaints from the public and has powers to direct police forces to re-examine any complaints that he considers have not been dealt with properly.

Mr McNeill is a member of the Northern Ireland Probation Board and an Independent Member of the Services Complaints Panels, Ministry of Defence. He was previously a prison governor in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, Chief Executive of the Scottish Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders, a Member of the Parole Board for England and Wales, a Member of the Risk Management Authority, a Human Rights Commissioner in Scotland.

Peter Neyroud

Chief Constable Peter Neyroud QPM was Chief Executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) from its inception in 2007. Due to retire from policing and the NPIA in December 2010, he was approached by the Home Secretary in September 2010 to undertake a full time, independent, review of police leadership and training.

The terms of reference of this review were established through the ‘Policing in the 21^st Century’ paper of July 2010 and he is due to present the Review to the Home Secretary in December 2010.

Previous to his role as CEO of the NPIA, Peter Neyroud was Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 2002 and Vice-President of ACPO with responsibility for the NPIA and the reform of ACPO.

He has an Honours Degree in Modern History from Oriel College, Oxford University, an MSc in Professional Studies (Crime and Policing) and diplomas in Applied Criminology and Business Excellence. He is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

A police officer since joining Hampshire Constabulary in 1980, Peter rose through the ranks there to become Detective Superintendent with responsibility for intelligence, covert operations and drug strategy.

He was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia Constabulary in 1998, reached Deputy Chief Constable two years later and was awarded the Queen's Police Medal for Services to Police in 2004. Peter Neyroud is a widely published author on policing, the editor of the Oxford Journal of Policing and a Jury member for the Stockholm International Prize in Criminology.

Stuart Simpson

I am a senior lecturer in Police Sciences at the University of Glamorgan. I Iecture and develop undergraduate students on our BSc (Hons) police sciences degree course. I am the module leader for a number of modules including, ‘management skills’ and ‘ethical investigations’. I am currently engaged in research for my Phd, my area of interest ‘Ethics and value based decision making by police officers.’ I have written and published a number of articles on ethics and policing.

A retired police officer with thirty years experience and a career long interest in ethics and policing. I retired as a Director of Studies at the National Police Improvement Agency Harrogate. During this time I developed and delivered police training solutions in, The Gambia, Uganda, Abu Dhabi and Afghanistan.

Philip Stenning

- B.A. (Hons.)(Cantab.)

- LL.M ( Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada)

- S.J.D. (Faculty of Law, University of Toronto)

- Doctoral thesis (1983): “Trusting the Chief: Legal aspects of the status and political accountability of the police in Canada”

Began working at Keele in January 2006. Previously at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (2003-2005), and University of Toronto, Canada (1968-2002).

Research interests have included the following areas: policing (public and private); the prosecution process and the administration of criminal justice; firearms abuse and gun control; Aboriginal justice and policing; accountability issues in criminal justice.

Currently completing two co-authored books on the prosecution process in New Zealand (one on its history and one on the current system), and an international comparative research project (involving scholars from 8 countries) on police attitudes towards the use of force.

I am nearing the end of a lengthy international comparative study (involving Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and U.S.A.) on relations between police and governments, and plan to write up this research as a book for publication in 2007.

David Strang

David Strang QPM BSc MSc was appointed Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police in 29 March 2007. Born in Glasgow and educated at Glasgow Academy and Loretto School, Musselburgh, he graduated with a BSc degree in Engineering Science from the University of Durham and a MSc degree in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck College, University of London. Mr Strang joined the Metropolitan Police in 1980 and, rising through the ranks, had operational postings in several territorial divisions, CID, Career Development, Territorial Support Group, a secondment to the Police Staff College and was also for a time Staff Officer to the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner. His final post in the force was as Divisional Commander of Wembley Division.

In September 1998 he was appointed Assistant Chief Constable in Lothian and Borders Police with operational responsibility for all Uniform, Traffic and CID functions within the City of Edinburgh area, and was responsible for the planning and delivery of policing at large events such as the Opening of the Scottish Parliament and Edinburgh's Hogmanay Street Party.

In August 2001 he was appointed Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary where he demonstrated his strong commitment to community policing and to building relationships at all levels. He chaired the Alcohol and Drug Action Team and the Youth Justice Strategy Group and was an active member of a number of region-wide partnerships.

He is a past President of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), having served in that capacity for the year 2004-05, and is now the Executive Vice President of ACPOS. He also chairs the ACPOS Criminal Justice Business Area and is a member of the National Criminal Justice Board. He was a member of the McInnes Committee reviewing summary justice in Scotland (2003-2004), the Sentencing Commission (2003-2006) and the Scottish Prisons Commission which published its report “Scotland’s Choice” in 2008.

He was awarded the Queen's Police Medal in Her Majesty's Golden Jubilee Birthday Honours in 2002.