How Does Police Recruit Training

Police recruit training has come under scrutiny since the early 1990’s by academics, Police and the Public alike who question whether the quality of education received before officers begin their job does not meet the needs of the profession (Ness, 1991). In the past researchers, have questioned if the training adequately prepares recruits to become effective police officers and if the training received is sufficient. Edwards (1993) concluded that “no matter what basic training standards are adopted, law enforcement agencies are still not meeting their educational and training objectives”. Practitioners and academics agree that the primary function of Police training is to enable an officer to perform their job (Ness, 1991), the question to this authors mind is whether the training for future police officers will effectively prepare them for a highly volatile and yet compassionate role. Ness (1991) found that 48% of police
officers who responded to the authors questionnaire stated that the training received was somewhat inadequate, many of them found that the training required a more hands on approach to training rather than the theory behind legislature. In a latter study of police training Brand and Peak (1995) ask a series of questions to American police officers, including: “are we furnishing proper police training to recruits? How can we determine whether or not the academy curriculum is adequate for entry-level officers? How do we know if the curriculum is comprehensible and useful to new officers on the street?” (Brand & Peak, 1995, p. 45) conclude by saying that “It has become increasingly important for police training to be assessed, to determine the propriety, adequacy, discernibility and utility of the curriculum”.
Previous research
Training across the country takes various forms and times, for example, Wiltshire Constabulary conduct a 14 week training programme with a 4 week practical phase prior to posting (Wiltshire Constabluary, 2016), Essex Police have a 5 stage approach (stage 5 being training) Training is 18 weeks long in which they also attain a diploma in policing and are then posted for 55 weeks to the Essex Police College where the conduct varying levels of study and patrol/community work (Essex Police, 2016), The Royal Military Police (of whom the author is an officer in) conducts 26 weeks of training but this includes special to arm Military training, 18 weeks consists of the law phase of this training.
Core TO’s for a Police Constable in the UK consist of: Communication, ethics and Integrity, evidence based policing, leadership and management along with ensuring public safety, protecting vulnerable people, preventing and reducing crime, maximising information and intelligence, conducting investigations and supporting victims. (College of Policing,
2015)
Theoretical framework and hypotheses to be tested
With the 3 (minimal data collection) it is already apparent that police forces across the UK conduct their training in varying degrees. This author will try and seek to establish how police are trained across the forces and look at how other countries train their police officers, for example the German police in Nord Rhien-Westfalen have to complete a university course with the German police for 3 years before they are allowed to conduct patrolling and then they are on probation for at least 1 year with a patrol partner (Authors experience). American police courses often have up to 650 hours (or around 16 weeks) of formal training. (Blintiff, 1993).
Is this training enabling our new police officers to carry out their duties and how is it broken down in to theoretical and practical training? Do we need to learn the law verbatim as the move of modern technology is so advanced that most police officers have the Police National Legal Database (PNLD) to hand and therefore are we wasting valuable training time. In a ‘nut shell’
Do we train new police officers appropriately?