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Policing in England and Wales faces a reckoning over the levels of trauma experienced by officers and staff as “trauma tracker” tools are to be mandated by ministers to ensure the psychological toll caused by exposure to death, abuse and neglect is recorded.

A Home Office white paper published in January outlined a legislative push to make trauma monitoring systems mandatory across all 43 forces in England and Wales.

Leading the development is Insp Stuart King, an officer with 23 years of service, who helped develop a prototype system being used by his force, Avon and Somerset police.

By linking an officer’s individual collar number to every harrowing incident they attend, the tracker creates a permanent, digital record of cumulative exposure that cannot be ignored by a changing rotation of supervisors.

“When I joined 23 years ago, I don’t even remember the word ‘trauma’ being mentioned,” King said, reflecting on a career that began in 2003. “It wasn’t defined. It was just something you got on with.”

That silence has come at a cost. King pointed to a landmark 2018 study, Policing: The Job and the Life, which revealed that more than 90% of UK police officers had been exposed to traumatic incidents. The study also found that 20% were suffering from clinical levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Despite these figures, the system has historically relied on “reactive” measures, often waiting for an officer to show signs of distress before offering help.

The new tracker seeks to intervene before a psychological breakdown occurs. It functions by scanning the force’s crime recording systems and highlighting “red flag” incidents such as fatal road traffic collisions, child sexual abuse and sudden deaths.

King’s team ensured the tool looks backwards as well as forwards, pulling up to 20 years of historical crime data to assess the “cumulative drip” of a long career. “The challenge is that we don’t want to under-capture those potential touchpoints,” King said.

He said while the frontline – the officers attending mangled car wrecks or violent brawls – were the obvious focus, the data had unearthed some unperceived distress among back-office staff. Call takers, digital media investigators and crime scene investigators are often carrying trauma scores similar to those on patrol.

King said the tracker now ensured these “invisible” casualties of policing were identified, which he said was particularly vital given the frequency with which officers change roles, In the past, a new sergeant might have been unaware that a veteran officer joining their team had spent the last decade processing homicides. The tracker bridges that gap, allowing a manager to see a collective history of exposure.

King said the psychological reality of the job was a jarring “flip” of emotions. He recalled his time as a sergeant in Bristol, where he might attend a tragic, sudden death only to be called to a violent street fight five minutes later. “Those levels of emotions can have a significant impact on people over time if it’s not recognised,” he said.

In response to concerns about personal data gathering, King said the system was designed with an opt-out clause, and the data was used primarily as a “conversation starter” for one-to-one meetings with supervisors. “It treats people as humans. It’s about being able to say: ‘We’ve noticed you’ve had high trauma exposure – how are you?’”

As the 2026 white paper moves toward legislation, the data generated by these trackers is expected to provide the evidence base needed to secure more funding for mental health resources. King said he was working with the University of Bath to provide independent academic scrutiny of the system, hoping to prove that while policing would always be traumatic, the neglect of those who do it no longer needed to be.

“We’re not going to stop the exposure. This is the nature of policing,” King said. “But it’s how you manage it, how you support it, and how you acknowledge it that matters.”