Safer Streets: using Ministry of Justice Data First datasets to support the UK Government’s Safer Streets Mission

Data First – the Ministry of Justice (MoJ)’s ambitious data linking and research programme – recently received funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to undertake new work in support of the UK Government’s Safer Streets Mission. In this blog, the Data First team tell us more about this and highlight the opportunity for researchers to use Data First data to explore important research themes for the Mission.

What is Data First?

Data First is a flagship data linking, research and academic engagement programme, led by MoJ and funded by ADR UK. The programme is unlocking the potential of the wealth of data collected when people interact with justice services, by making deidentified linked datasets from across the justice system available for research.

We have also delivered a flagship data share with the Department for Education, linking the National Pupil Database with the Police National Computer – the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education linked dataset - England. This is significantly enhancing the evidence base on the links between social care, education and youth offending. The team have facilitated over 60 research projects to date, delivering powerful new insights for policy and practice.

What is the Safer Streets Mission?

The UK Government’s Safer Streets Mission aims to reduce serious harm and increase confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. Central to this Mission is the Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) and knife crime within a decade, tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) and make town centres safer.

To support this ambition, UKRI has launched a data research and innovation challenge to tackle crime concentrations. Recognising the huge potential of Data First data to address evidence needs relevant to the Mission, our team successfully applied for funding to be part of the solution to this challenge.

How is Data First supporting the Safer Streets Mission?

In support of the Mission, we are working to:

• maximise the use of existing Data First datasets to explore critical evidence gaps related to VAWG, knife crime and ASB
• develop new linked datasets, including a refresh of the MoJ-DfE data share
• build research capability through training and collaborative workshops

By linking criminal justice data with education and social care factors, and mapping this geographically, we aim to build a more comprehensive picture of where offending becomes concentrated and why. These insights can then help government to inform locally targeted interventions.

Safer Streets Workshop

In October we held a workshop bringing together colleagues across government with academic researchers, to explore how Data First can best deliver evidence relevant to the Mission. This was a great opportunity for policymakers to discuss their evidence needs with researchers – both within and external to government.  

We had an excellent discussion, with a range of ideas for research opportunities. A few high-level takeaways were:

• Participants agreed that Data First data has significant potential to explore a breadth of research questions relevant to the Safer Streets Mission. To take full advantage of this, we are always keen to hear from researchers interested in using Data First datasets. Please see details at the end of this blog on how to get in touch!
• We heard lots of suggestions of other datasets that could be linked to Data First, to enable further relevant research in the future. The workshop identified valuable future linkage opportunities, such as linking health, income or prison education data that could enhance the research potential for the Mission. Our team will continue to work alongside other data owners and government departments to explore how we can safely and responsibly link and share more data to support researchers in delivering timely and quality research in the public good.
• Some of the research ideas we heard have previously been explored using Data First data. This suggests that our partners – including policymakers and researchers – may not always be aware of the research that Data First has facilitated. To make best use of the evidence base that is developing, and ensure findings have the most impact for decision-making, we need to ensure findings reach the right people. We are working on how to disseminate findings more effectively, including through building stronger relationships with policy teams to ensure we can share key insights, as well as continuing to publish a round-up of findings in our annual Data First Research Bulletin.
• Building a robust evidence base for the Mission is complex and Data First cannot provide all the answers. Attendees recognised the value of our work but also highlighted – and we fully agree – that understanding and meeting the evidence needs is challenging. This calls for a collaborative approach and so we must continue working together, through initiatives like this workshop, to maximise our impact.

What next for Data First?

The team are focused first on analysis to explore the characteristics and factors linked to involvement in VAWG, knife crime and ASB. We look forward to updating partners as this work progresses.

We will hold another workshop in 2026 to support researchers to use Data First synthetic datasets (available to researchers via the UK Data Service) to develop strong research proposals.

And lastly, we would like to encourage researchers to apply for funding from the ongoing ADR UK Research Fellowship call (deadline 26 February 2026), for projects relevant to the Safer Streets Mission and wider MoJ research priorities as set out in our published Areas of Research Interest (2025).

Please get in touch!

If you would like to get in touch and stay updated about the Data First programme, please sign up to our mailing list by emailing us at datafirst@justice.gov.uk.