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Criminal Behavioural Psychologist
Laura advises the Police, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Home Office on violent crime.
Laura created the Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Harassment and Honour based Violence Risk Checklist (DASH 2009) on behalf of ACPO and in partnership with CAADA. This is currently being rolled out across England and Wales. Laura is also a consultant to Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (CAADA) and has more recently been asked to be a Director of the Protection Against Stalking (PAS) charity. PAS was established by three mothers, Tricia Bernal, Carol Faruqui and Stella Moore, whose daughters, Clare, Rana and Tania were murdered by their stalkers.
Laura left the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), New Scotland Yard in August 2007 to take up the role of advising ACPO after 10 years working on violent crime. Previously she set up the first Homicide Prevention Unit in the UK and the Violent Crime Intelligence and Analysis Unit in the MPS, brigading all the public protection units. She has also worked with the Police Standards Unit, Domestic Violence Bill team and Violent Crime Unit at the Home Office and has trained at the National Centre for the Analysis of Violence Crime at the FBI.
Laura Richards has been involved in many complex murder cases, assaults and other sexual/violent crimes, including the murders of Amelie Delagrange, Sally-Ann Bowman, Jodie Dubrowski and Banaz Mahmod. She has reviewed, analysed and conducted psychological autopsies on hundreds of cases to gain a better picture of the antecedents to murder and intervention and prevention opportunities. All this learning has informed the DASH (2009) Risk Model.
Laura recently filmed Killer in the Family for the Crime and Investigation Channel http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/shows/killer-in-the-family and also appeared on ITV's Ladykillers series and War on Knives on Sky One.
Other television work includes Jack the Ripper for Channel Five in which Laura re-opened the case and using modern criminology and psychological analysis, and working with a team of experts, applied 21st century techniques to understand a 19th century killer, dispelling many myths that have grown up around the case. The results completely change our understanding of Jack the Ripper, providing a detailed psychological study of the kind of person he was, where he lived and even what he my have looked like. Laura also was a regular contributor to Street Crime Live with Donal McIntyre on Channel Five as an expert on violence. She was involved in profiling cold cases, launching appeals, speaking to police officers and families who have lost loved ones through violent assaults.
Laurarecently co-authored the book Policing Domestic Violence published by Oxford University Press and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 2008 for her work on homicide prevention.
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