I suspect that many readers will have known, or at least know of, Dr Tom Williamson, who died last month aged 59.
Tom was a former police officer turned academic, a passionate advocate for ethical policing practice – particularly in police interviewing – and defender of human rights. In recent years his achievements included helping to establish a bi-annual Investigative Interviewing Conference (in Quebec in 2004, and in Portsmouth UK in 2006). He also published prolifically, and right up to the last he was working on several books, including:
- A second edition of Human Rights and Policing published by Martinus Nijoff: Leiden.
- The Handbook of Criminal Investigation, which will be published shortly by Willan.
- The Handbook of Knowledge Based Policing, to be published by Wiley.
- International developments in investigative interviewing, based on the Portsmouth intervewing conference to be published this year by Willan.
- A book on the Psychology of Investigative Interviewing, which will probably be published in 2008.
Tom was passionate about bringing practitioners and academics together, and many of us have benefited greatly from his support. He will be sadly missed.
David Rose’s tribute to Tom in the Guardian (14 Mar) is here: Moderniser whose reforms changed police procedures:
There was a time, at the start of the 1990s, when it seemed that the British police service, reeling from the disclosure of investigative malpractice that began with the release of the Guildford Four, had lost the capacity to reform itself, and was unlikely to survive in its existing form. That such predictions proved inaccurate is in no small measure down to the psychologist and detective Tom Williamson, who has died aged 59 of mesothelioma. The former deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire, he was a central figure in police modernisation for more than two decades. [...]
Building from the analysis of mishandled interrogations and miscarriages of justice contained in his 1990 Kent University PhD, Williamson was at the forefront of a radical shift in police interview techniques and training, determined that the one-time emphasis on “getting a cough” at any cost should be replaced by a neutral search for reliable evidence. [...]
The report of the 1993 royal commission on criminal justice quoted extensively from Williamson’s research into the way suspects – as he saw it – abused their right to silence, and the law was changed. In the same period, he played a leading role in developing the model of investigative interviewing known as Peace – planning and preparation, engage and explain, account, closure and evaluation – that is now the basis of the national training programme all officers undergo. It has since been adopted by several countries abroad.
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