The Police Foundation - Blair Gibbs, Dame Sara Thornton

Founded in 1979, the Police Foundation is an independent research think-tank, and a registered charity.

Our output helps educate the public, media, and policy-makers, and our research is focused on improving the training and capabilities of the police for the benefit of the public.  We support the policy-making community and pride ourselves on taking a considered, non-partisan and deliberative approach. 

We investigate research questions, generate evidence, and develop good policy and practice. We engage with experts, academics and frontline staff, as well as working to understand public sentiment and political concerns, to arrive at solutions that win the policy argument.  We also provide informed commentary in the media on contemporary policing and crime policy issues. In recent years, the Foundation has been highly influential in shaping policing policy in the United Kingdom. We have written extensively on technology use in policing, publishing the Strategic Review of Policing (2022), the Power of Information (2024) and Policing and Artificial Intelligence (2025).