The ‘Academic’ Police Officer versus the ‘Trade’ Police Officer

There is a lot of ongoing debate around how much academia should influence policing. Indeed, there are many policing professionals and academic scholars who advocate the importance of evidence based approaches to policing. In turn there are many who believe that policing is a craft and as such cannot be reliant upon academia.

Interviewees were asked for their opinions of how academia and police training could work together.

Interviewee One saw the need for academia in policing but did not see how the trainers could be expected to deliver that within the classroom setting:

“I am all in favour of training in psychology as long as it is an outside speaker and the bosses don’t think that the trainers can speak some ‘psychobabble’. We should be getting outside speakers in who are credible for example the lady who came in on SDD days and did food nutrition and the forensic psychologist. That went down well because people respected them and it wasn’t some trainer trying to stand up and deliver something they have read in a book. That needs to be done by the experts.”

Indeed, Interviewee One had previously been involved with universities and police training and told me that it was a bad experience:

“A downside to this is when IPLDP started we sent them to University for a week as one of the modules and it didn’t work out well, as the University brought people in from the outside various community groups with an axe to grind with the cops so people turned up and gave it to these new recruits. Rather than having guest speakers who might have their own agenda they need to put their own academics up who are charismatic and knowledgeable.”

Interviewee Two did not see the need for academia within the policing setting. They felt that unless you have done ‘the job’ then you would not understand the dynamics of being a police officer. They also stated that different learners have different styles and that they like to be facilitative and practical when they teach:

They also believe that the police are now being involved in more areas than they should be:

“You can’t be everything to everyone. It’s like mental health. We are lay people when it comes to that at the end of the day and we can’t identify certain mental health issues. Yet, there is an expectancy that we can.”

Interviewee Four understood that police training did not give officers enough and how they speak of their personal experiences as operational officers in the classroom and also integrate this in practical assessments:

Interviewee Four acknowledged the need for academia within policing and also how a practical application of academic findings must be used. However, they also are aware of how policing culture stifles the acceptance of academia and how this drive for academic help within police training is coming years too late:

“We need to understand trends, patterns, models and theories. We need to be able to apply them then when we come across them in the real world. We’ve turned our back on research and academia because we know policing. I think that is a mistake and we need to buy in and embrace it. Running academic education alongside police training is vital. We have opened the door to it but we are year’s too late and playing catch up.”

Interviewee Four goes further stating there is a need for police training to improve and work in unison with academic institutions:

“Training needs to improve there is no question about that. It needs to be joined up. It is not joined up I think the police service has stood by and the academic world has flew ahead. The police needs to be working with academics who can talk about how people react, why people react, the best ways to communicate, and the best ways to work with people. Police training has stood separate for too long and now needs to wake up.”

Interviewee Five links it to operational competence and sees an opportunity to enhance their skills as a trainer:

“My operational role is to be the best trainer I can be. If I was on response it would be to be the best response officer I can be. Operational competence is to be the best you can be in your current role. Train me in my current role let me benefit from some quality training. Let me go to MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University) and come back with some ideas I can put into my training.”

Interviewee Six is already aware of the benefits and spoke of how a previous partnership with a university had collapsed due to a lack of funding. Nevertheless, they had seen a positive impact on those who had been through the university process prior to this breakdown:

“Physically you could see that some officers write better, construct their evidence better, they understood the investigative processes better. That was because the academic side meant the writing up of material had to improve and it did. It made them think wider about academia in investigative processes such as why do sex offenders commit offences? Why do burglars repeat offend? This academia in its lowest form started to open up evidence based thought processes for these detectives. It is as simple as that. Funding is the issue. We had a fantastic programme up and running but the moment the government cut back funding we had to withdraw from the University.”

Interviewee Six also had some strong comments about trainers who shy away from academia and how the branch can ensure that academia is integrated into training:

“The trainers here need to up their game. They need to be asked ‘what have you read in the last 6 months that you have integrated into your lesson plans?’ How have you as supervisors managed and spoke to your constables about environmental scanning? Just because they are not academic does not mean they cannot talk about academia. They don’t need to be at Professor Level!”

Plainly, there is mixed feelings about whether or not academia has a place in police training. Interview seven was not of the opinion that it helps create a good police officer:

“A university could come in and teach law far better than us, but that is not what an officer is about.”

Conclusions and Recommendations

The interviewees all have spoken about the need for improvement in the way police training is delivered and that police training can explore various differing methods for delivering the quality training that it seeks to offer.

The findings are that more attention needs to be paid to inter-branch communication with regards to work coming in and skills matching individual trainers to particular courses and training design. It also found that there is a need to review the equipment available for trainers as it has been described as embarrassingly out of date. Equally, a review of how trainers are allocated workload and how many trainers are assigned to a course would be welcome in order to ensure maximum efficiency. Special Constabulary training is felt to be of a lower standard of that delivered to new recruits or PCSO’s (this is an area currently under review by OLWD). Also, careful consideration needs to be given to the knowledge of trainers in the areas of evidence based policing to ensure that knowledge imparted on others in the areas of crime prevention come from a sound evidence base and not just from experience or conjecture.

From the findings in this study many changes can be made. Some will be minor adjustments and others will require a more methodical investigation to ensure an evidence based approach that will indicate clear improvement.

One recommendation would be to review the disparities in allocations of work and the number of trainers used to deliver courses. The findings are that there is a feeling amongst the interviewees that some courses have more resources than is needed and others less so. There is also a need to review how the administration function is carried out, with trainers currently being responsible for their own administration since the cuts to back office staff. This has resulted in trainers being out of the classroom fulfilling these administrative duties such as photocopying for class handouts.

Another would be to review the forward planning of courses and encourage inter-branch working during the design phase, this would introduce a level of expertise and improvement to courses. The blockage appears to be more of a question of communication than of culture. The inter-branch working between Crime Training and Uniform Training, for example, could be greatly improved by the introduction of a three monthly meeting of first line leaders to discuss the ongoing training needs and the forthcoming training requirements. This would then allow forward planning of resources for a collaborative approach to working. All areas of the OLWD branch have specialist skills and it would be of benefit to the learner if these specialists had an input on the design and delivery of their skill area.

The training for the Special Constabulary is, at the time of writing this conclusion and recommendations part, under a period of review. I would highly recommend that this review takes on an evidence based approach to test and track the results of any changes in line with Professor L.W. Sherman’s work (Sherman, 2013). This will ensure that the Special Constabulary recruits get a quality training programme that is fit for purpose.

It became clear during this study that a lack of consistency in trainer could be a blockage to the Special student officers’ development. Those who trained PCSO’s and IPLDP students stated that the students felt they did not have the breadth of knowledge as Specials’ that they received whilst being trained as PCSO’s or student police officers. The IPLDP and PCSO students benefit from being allocated a small team of trainers who solely look after them during their initial training period. The recommendation is for a randomised control trial to be conducted between two intakes of specials’. This would take the form of a control group who are trained in the traditional way and an experimental group who are allocated a team of trainers in the same way as the PCSO and IPLDP students are given. Come the end of the initial training period an end of course assessment by way of knowledge examination and also practical application in a scenario based test could be done. This would be a good way to assess if having a regular team responsible for training specials will benefit the learner, as my hypotheses suggests, rather than the random allocation of trainers as is currently the case.

In terms of evidence based policing more needs to be done in this area within the police training environment. The debate continues as to whether training should be law based knowledge or the education to understand criminality and effective prevention techniques. Presently, the small amount of prevention spoken about in the classroom is based on experience, conjecture, and culture. It is not taught from a sound evidence base. There is a distinct difference between police training and police education. The trainers who work in the training school are excellent competent trainers of policing procedures and law. However, they are not equipped to give the education that is required to achieve the aim set out by HMIC of turning out effective crime fighters. The education of police officers in the criminological, sociological, and psychological causes of crime is what is needed yet sadly lacking. The push for evidence based policing is getting traction and this will transform policing. More collaboration with academic institutions and the ‘what works’ centre for crime reduction within the College of Policing is needed. The over focus on teaching law and procedures rather than evidence based methods of policing is stifling the development of officers in terms of lateral thinking and innovation. Officers need to have knowledge of the differences between correlation and causation. The continuous professional development needed is in some of the criminological theories that underpin the discipline such as ‘Routine Activity Theory’ (Akers & Sellers, 2009), ‘Socio-Spatial Theory’ (Bottoms, 2012), and ‘Control Theory’ (Hirschi, 1969) to name a few. This investment, which could be brought in part by collaboration with academic institutions, will ensure that officers have the tools in their toolkit to recognise particular causes of crime and criminal related activity and police with an evidence base. In the current time of austerity it is essential that officers can think for themselves and have an evidence base to draw from when making decisions. This is an area that requires great improvement if police training is to turn out the effective crime fighters that are needed to serve our communities in times of diminishing budgets.

Bibliography

Adair, J. (2011) The John Adair Lexicon of Leadership: The definitive guide to leadership skills and knowledge. Kogan Page: London.

Akers, R.L. and Sellers, C.S. (2009) ‘Routine Activity Theory’ in Criminological Theories: Introduction, evaluation and application, 5^th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, pg. 35-44.

Bottoms, A.E. (2012) ‘Developing Socio-Spatial Criminology’, in M.Maguire, R. Morgan, and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 5^th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press.

BBC News Website 23rd September 2013: Greater Manchester Police could axe up to 700 officer posts http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24202387 (accessed 27th August 2014)

BBC News Website (2) 24th March 1999: Lawrence Key Recommendations http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/285537.stm (accessed 9th March 2015)

Hirschi, T. (1969) Causes of Delinquency, Berkeley: University of California Press.

HMIC. (2003) Diversity Matters http://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/media/diversity-matters-full-report-20030201.pdf

HMIC (2012) Taking Time for Crime

New York Times 15th April 2014: Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels-nine-principles-of-policing.html?_r=0

Rt. Hon. The Lord Scarman, O.B.E. (1981) The Brixton Disorders 10-12 April 1981. HMSO: London

Sherman, L.W (2013) The Rise of Evidence Based Policing: Targeting, Testing, and Tracking. The University of Chicago: Chicago

Sherman, L.W (1978) The Quality of Police Education: a Critical Review With Recommendations for Improving Programs in Higher Education (the Jossey-Bass Series in Higher Education)

Smith, J.A., Flowers, P. & Larkin, M. (2012). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. London: Sage.

Smith, J.A. & Osborn, M. (2003). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In J.A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods (pp. 53-80). London: Sage.

Appendices

Ethics Form:

Application for Ethics Approval Form (AEAF)

(This form includes the University Ethics Check List and a risk assessment

Undergraduate projects may be approved by supervisors. If approved by the supervisor, they and the student are required to meet to sign AEAF and the supervisor should then send it to the Departmental administrator.

Accessed 13^th September 2013

1. 
   Vulnerability: Could your study involve participants who may be classed as vulnerable and may need assistance to give informed consent?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

2. 
   Consent & Deception: Will participants be deceived or will it be necessary for participants to take part in the study without their knowledge and consent at the time?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

2. 
   Consent: Describe the arrangements for obtaining participants’ consent. [150 words max.]
   

Participants will be provided with a brief overview of the project and process and will sign to say they have been fully informed and had the opportunity to answer any questions

3. 
   Recruitment & Sampling: Have you or will you obtain permission from a gatekeeper (e.g. an external ethics committee) to access data, texts or participants?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

4. 
   Data Storage & Protection: Will you collect and store personal information that would require you to abide by the Data Protection Act (1998)?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

5. 
   Harm: Could your study subject harm to participants’ psychological well-being, physical health, personal values or dignity, beyond that which they face in their normal lifestyles?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

The study content is not thought to cause any harm to the participant. To ensure the well-being of the participants are protected, the research aims will be outlined in the participant brief and the participants will be assured that they can withdraw at any point.

6. 
   Invasiveness: Are drugs, placebos or other substances (e.g. food substances, vitamins) to be administered to participants or will the study involve invasive, intrusive or potentially harmful procedures of any kind?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

Drugs, placebos and other substances will not be administered.

7. 
   Coercion: Will inducements be offered to participants in a way that could lead to or be perceived as a form of coercion?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

Inducements will not be offered to the participants. Participation is completely voluntary.

8. 
   Risk: Is there any possible risk to the researcher (e.g. working alone with participants, interviewing in secluded or dangerous settings)?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

The researcher will not be at risk when collecting data.

9. 
   Other: Are there any other ethical issues for your project?
   

[Tick the relevant box]

Discuss [150 words max.]

All ethical issues have been considered.
Section 4) Anonymity, Confidentiality & Dissemination/Publication
1). Will the data on every individual/source be treated as anonymous?
[Tick the relevant box]

Yes

------

No

N/a

Discuss [150 words max.]

The participants are known to the researcher. Any written information will be fully anonymised and the recordings erased.

2). Will the data provided by every individual/source be treated as confidential?

Discuss [150 words max.]

It will be outlined in the briefing discussion that data will be available for discussion with a research supervisor, however participants are to remain confident that their personal information will remain anonymous at all times.

Discuss [150 words max.]