The Making of a Police Officer

Comparative Perspectives on Police Education and Recruitment

Tore Bjørgo, Marie-Louise Damen, Tore Bjørgo, Marie-Louise Damen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367228668
• eBook ISBN: 9781000033748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Does a more academic type of police education produce new police officers that are reluctant to patrol the streets? What is the impact of gender diversity and political orientation on a police students' career aspirations and attitudes to policing? These are some of the questions addressed by this longitudinal project, following police students in seven European countries. The unique data material makes it possible to explore a wide range of topics relevant to the future development of policing, police education and police science more generally.

Part I presents an overview of the different goals and models of police education in the seven participating countries. Part II describes what type of student is attracted to police education, taking into consideration educational background, political orientation and career aspirations. Part III shows the social impact of police education by examining students' orientations towards emerging competence areas; students' career aspirations; and students' attitudes concerning trust, cynicism and legalism.

The overall results show that police students are strikingly similar across different types of police education. Students in academic institutions are at least as interested in street patrolling as students in vocational training institutions. Gender and recruitment policies matters more in relation to career preferences than education models. The national context plays a more important role than the type of police education system. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in policing, criminology, sociology, social theory and cultural studies and those interested in how police education shapes its graduates.

Part I
Police education in seven European countries

Chapter 1
A longitudinal and comparative European study of Recruitment, Education and Careers in the Police (RECPOL)

What this project contributes to the development of police science

Tore Bjørgo and Marie-Louise Damen

Introduction

What characterizes the kinds of people recruited into police work? How are they shaped by police education and socialization into the profession? And how do different systems of police recruitment and education affect the attitudes and views on police work of the new police officers produced by these systems? These are fundamental questions for police science, as well as for institutions providing police education. It is also of great importance to society: what kind of police do we want, and to what extent can we use police education and training to shape our new police officers?

Still, at least until recently, there has been surprisingly little systematic comparative and longitudinal research on recruitment into the police and the impact of police education and police practice on new police officers. Until now, there have only been longitudinal studies of police students and new police officers limited to single countries or cities: in the United States (Van Maanen, 1975), the UK (Fielding, 1988), France (Monjardet & Gorgeon, 1999), Australia (Chan, 2003), Canada (Alain & Grégoire, 2008) and Sweden (Lauritz, 2009). Unfortunately, although these different national studies are all longitudinal, they have used different methodological designs, questionnaires or interview guides, thereby producing data that are not directly comparable. It is, of course, possible to compare and discuss the findings from these different national studies, and the fact that methodological designs are different may even be a strength, as quantitative and qualitative studies with different questions and time spans may provide complementary insights. Still, these studies do not provide comparable data.

RECPOL’s comparative and longitudinal research design

It is a widely held view among many police researchers that there is a great need for more comparative policing research in Europe and elsewhere. However, it is not always clear what comparative research really means. In the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) study on Police Science Perspectives: Towards a European Approach (del Barrio Romero et al., 2007/2009) two very different views on comparative research on policing were expressed. One position held that comparison in the field of policing centres mainly on an “exchange of information and experience into systematic ways of learning from each other” (del Barrio Romero et al., 2007/2009, pp. 181–182). The other position held that those ‘comparative seminars’, where representatives from different countries tell their stories about how policing is in their countries, are of limited value. What is needed is “[a] far more ambitious approach […] to develop systematic comparative studies based on shared methodological instruments, used to collect and produce truly comparative data” (del Barrio Romero et al., 2007/2009, p. 93).

The research project presented in this volume is clearly an example of the latter approach to comparative research. Other good examples of truly comparative police studies are Johannes Knutsson’s study of the police use of firearms in the Nordic countries (Knutsson, 2005) and Dorian Schaap’s study on citizens’ trust in the police across European countries (Schaap, 2018).

The origin: the StudData research design

Our research design is based on a longitudinal survey instrument developed by the Centre for the Study of Professions at Oslo Metropolitan University, the so-called StudData survey (Senter for profesjonsstudier, 2011). A longitudinal research design is a study that involves repeated observations of the same items over a longer period. The original design was to present the respondents with partly identical sets of questions during different phases of their careers to register a development of attitudes, preferences and adoption of norms. The questionnaires are distributed to the students in three or four phases: at the beginning and end of their education and three years and (if response rates are sufficiently high) six years into their professional life. Some core questions are repeated in the various phases, and other questions are added to relate to their specific professional situation. The respondents are anonymous to the researchers, identifiable only through a coded ID key (which is kept secure and separate from their questionnaires) to protect their identity and privacy. The methodology makes it possible to trace changes at individual as well as at group levels.

StudData has followed approximately 20 professional study programmes in Norway, comprising students from professional educations as diverse as teachers, social workers, engineers, librarians, nurses, journalists and medical doctors. A large database with comparable longitudinal data is available for researchers. For some of the study programmes, two or three panels (cohorts with some years in between) have been studied. The original StudData design made it possible to compare students from different professional educations, how their values and attitudes change through the four phases of their education and careers and also to compare how different cohorts may differ.

How StudData became RECPOL

The idea to adapt the StudData design to police students/officers was first presented by Tore Bjørgo in the original 2007 CEPOL report Perspectives on Police Science in Europe (del Barrio Romero et al., 2007/2009). In that initiative, the original StudData design was pushed one step further by introducing an international comparative dimension. This is of particular interest in European police research, since we know that systems of police education and training vary considerably throughout Europe, with three-year bachelor degrees for all new police officers in some countries and 16 weeks of formal training combined with on-the-job training in some other countries. The status and trust of the police in the population and vice versa also differ greatly in various European countries (Kääriäinen & Sirén, 2012; Schaap & Scheepers, 2014). The StudData research design with an added cross-country comparative dimension would then be the perfect methodological instrument to test the impact of these different systems of police education on a number of issues, such as who are recruited to the police, how does their education/training shape their values and views on policing, and how does exposure to the field of practice and socialization into police culture affect their attitudes and outlooks, as well as a number of other questions, which are of great practical and theoretical relevance.

Since 2008, a group of researchers worked together to develop this design into an ambitious European comparative and longitudinal study of Recruitment, Education and Careers in the POLice, what eventually became known as the RECPOL project. The initial group consisted of researchers from institutions providing police education in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Selecting the most relevant parts of the original StudData questionnaire, they added a number of police-specific questions to bring in some of the core issues of police science into the questionnaire. Some questions, taken from the European Social Survey on political orientation and trust in other people, were also included in the RECPOL questionnaire to allow for a comparison between the attitudes of police students/officers and the general population in the relevant countries.

A draft version of the questionnaire for new police students was tested in Norway and Sweden in 2009. The first study based on data from this pilot study was presented at CEPOL’s Research and Science conference in Oslo in October 2010 (Fekjær, 2014; Bjørgo, 2017). Researchers from similar institutions in other European countries were then invited to join the project. From 2012 onwards, institutions of police education from seven European countries/regions committed to take part in the project (in alphabetical order):

• Belgium
• Catalonia
• Denmark
• Iceland
• Norway
• Scotland
• Sweden

This volume presents the results of these seven countries and regions. The group of countries and regions is not the result of a random selection or a reasoned choice, but it consists of those who were willing and able to join the project. There is, however, sufficient variety within this group of countries and regions that makes the results interesting also for countries and regions outside this group. Hove and Vallès provide in Chapter 2 a picture of the initial police educations involved against the background of their respective police organizations and their general education systems.

The project leaders foresaw four different measurement points in time, akin to the initial StudData design: at the start of the police students’ education or training (Phase 1), at the end of their education or training (Phase 2), after three years in the police (Phase 3) and after six years in the police (Phase 4). The moments of data collection would thus be different in the different countries depending on the duration of their police education or training. Later in this chapter, we elaborate on the methodological implications, decisions and limitations of the project.

How can this project contribute to the development of police science?

The RECPOL project as a whole explores three main hypotheses:

1. Different systems of police education attract different types of police students.
2. Different police education systems shape police students’ values, attitudes and career plans in different ways through the training and education process.
3. Experience from the field of practice – working among police colleagues and with the public and offenders – influences further the values, attitudes and career plans of the newly educated police officers.

This volume covers the first two hypotheses, using the available data thus far from Phase 1 and Phase 2 in the seven participating countries. To explore the last hypothesis, we need to make use of the not-yet-complete Phase 3 and 4 data. Later publications will have to report on the third hypothesis, although some chapters in this volume already touch upon this issue.

Police science is a new interdisciplinary and applied discipline, emerging in response to the development of the police as a knowledge-based profession rather than as a craft. Police science has been described as “the scientific study of the police as an institution and of policing as a process” (del Barrio Romero et al., 2007/2009). How can the RECPOL project contribute to the development of police science? What core questions and issues of police science may then be addressed (and possibly answered) by this kind of comparative and longitudinal data? Here are some examples:

What characterizes those who are recruited into police education and the profession? This may be analysed by dimensions such as gender, age, geographic (urban/rural) and ethnic origin, class background, prior education and work experience, values and attitudes in relation to general political issues, as well as issues related to views on policing and crime, motivations for joining the police and expectations for their own future in the police profession. In what ways do police students differ from students seeking other types of professions (such as prison staff, social workers, teachers, nurses or journalists) in terms of motivation or identification with the profession?

How does the police education process influence the values/attitudes, motivations and expectations of police students? In what ways do police education and training socialize students into a police role? Do their values, motivations and expectations change over the course of study? Comparing measurements at the beginning and end of their education (Phase 1 and Phase 2) will provide some answers.

How does experience in the field of practice by working in the police and among police colleagues influence junior police officers’ values/attitudes, motivations and expectations after three years or six years of police work? Are they able to maintain their idealism, or do they become cynical towards the public and their organization or leaders? There are compelling reasons to expect that socialization into such a strong ‘community of practice’ as the police force will have a powerful impact on the values, attitudes and outlooks of the individuals involved. To what extent do new police officers become less trustful of other people as they gradually integrate a police role as part of their personality? Does this exposure to the field of practice make a stronger impact than police education? To what degree do new police officers pursue further education or academic degrees? What are their professional ambitions? Do they end up in the positions and specializations they aspired to at an earlier stage? Are there any links between what attracted them to police education early on and what they actually end up doing? Do they stay in the police force, or do they leave the profession? These questions will mainly be answered when we have collected and analysed data from Phase 3 and 4 (three and six years into the career), data which will not be included in this volume. In some of the countries, however – Norway and Denmark in particular – long periods of workplace practice are built into the basic police education. Comparing data from Phase 1 and 2 will give at least an indication of the impact of workplace practice on the students’ values and ambitions.

Are there significant differences between the types of persons recruited to police education in the various European countries in terms of background and motivations? If so, to what extent can this be explained in terms of different types of p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• PART I Police education in seven European countries
• 1 A longitudinal and comparative European study of Recruitment, Education and Careers in the Police (RECPOL): what this project contributes to the development of police science
• 2 Police education in seven European countries in the framework of their police systems
• PART II Selecting police students
• 3 Diversity and academisation: who does police education attract?
• 4 Iceland as a microcosm of the effects of educational reform on police students’ social background
• 5 Mirroring society: how politically representative are police students in Europe?
• 6 Understanding learning preferences and career aspirations of Norwegian police students from a comparative perspective
• PART III Shaping police students
• 7 Police students’ values of enduring and emerging competence areas in police education
• 8 Horizontal and vertical career preferences and aspirations for male and female police recruits
• 9 Cynicism and (dis)trust in the police: self-selection or evolving attitudes?
• 10 Producing legalists or Dirty Harrys? Police education and field training
• 11 Selecting and shaping police students in Europe: main findings and discussion
• Index