Digital Justice & Policing

Chief Superintendent Matt Richards has management responsibility for Police Scotland’s Digitally Enabled Policing Programme, a key component of the ten-year strategy for policing ‘Serving a Changing Scotland’.
Between 2017 and 2019 he was Divisional Commander for Specialist Services, giving him national responsibility for Armed Policing, Specialist Operations, dog and mounted branches, Air Support Unit, Dive and Marine Unit, Mountain Rescue, the National Hostage and Crisis Negotiator Unit and Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) teams. Matt has substantial experience commanding major events including the Hogmanay Street Party, the Edinburgh Festival, Royal residences and the visit of the President of the United States. He has also been frequently deployed as a Public Order Commander and Strategic Firearms Commander across the country. While in charge of Specialist Services he led on the extension of Taser, the RPAS (drones) Programme and changes to the Armed Policing Deployment Model.
In 2016 he was Operations Superintendent for C3 Division (force control rooms) as they were re-modelled from 6 sites to 3, having previously been the Partnership and then Operations Superintendent in Edinburgh before, during and after the inception of Police Scotland.
Chief Superintendent Richards joined the legacy Lothian & Borders Police in 1994 and was initially based in the Wester Hailes area. He has held various uniformed and detective roles up to superintendent across the service.

In 2021 he was Strategic Public Order Commander during the successful  delivery of the Conference of Parties (COP26) which was held in Glasgow.

The Scottish Biometrics Commissioner is Dr Brian Plastow, who was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen on 12 April 2021 on the nomination of the Scottish Parliament. He is a former police Chief Superintendent and Lead Inspector with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. Brian has more than 4 decades of policing experience in Scotland and has significant knowledge of, and practical experience in, the use of biometric data and technologies for criminal justice and policing purposes.

Prof. Nancy Loucks OBE is the Chief Executive of Families Outside, a Scottish voluntary organisation that works on behalf of families affected by imprisonment. Prior to this she worked as an Independent Criminologist, receiving her MPhil and PhD from the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and in 2012 was appointed as Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for Law, Crime and Justice. Nancy was awarded an OBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours List for services to Education and Human Rights.  She co-chaired the Justice & Care Workstream for the Independent Care Review and the Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison in Scotland; chairs the Board of the International Coalition for Children of Incarcerated Parents (INCCIP); and is a member of the Global Prisoners’ Families Research Group at the Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. 

Irakli Beridze is the Head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at UNICRI, United Nations​. More than 20 years of experience in leading multilateral negotiations, developing stakeholder engagement programmes with governments, UN agencies, international organisations, private industry and corporations, think tanks, civil society, foundations, academia, and other partners on an international level. Mr Beridze is advising governments and international organizations on numerous issues related to international security, scientific and technological developments, emerging technologies, innovation and disruptive potential of new technologies, particularly on the issue on crime prevention, criminal justice and security. He is supporting governments worldwide on the strategies, action plans, roadmaps and policy papers on AI. Since 2014, Initiated and managed one of the first United Nations Programmes on AI. Initiating and organizing number of high-level events at the United Nations General Assembly, and other international organizations. Finding synergies with traditional threats and risks as well as identifying solutions that AI can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. He is a member of various international task forces, including the World Economic​ Forum’s Global Artificial Intelligence Council, the UN High-level panel for digital cooperation, the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence of the European Commission.  He is frequently lecturing and speaking on the subjects related to technological development, exponential technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics and international security. He has numerous publications in international journals and magazines and frequently quoted in media on the issues related to AI. Irakli Beridze is an International Gender Champion supporting the IGC Panel Parity Pledge. He is also recipient of recognition on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the OPCW in 2013.​ 

Kate Wallace joined Victim Support Scotland as Chief Executive Officer in 2017.

Kate has thirteen years’ experience of high-profile leadership roles in the public and voluntary sectors in both executive and non-executive roles. Prior to VSS, Kate lead Visualise Scotland, a service delivery charity that provides services to people living with disabilities and complex needs from across Scotland. She has previously held the position of UK Programme Director for Barnardo’s and was based between London and Glasgow.