Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE POLICE REFORM PROGRAMME
“Policing now needs to build a new
relationship with higher education, in
which training, practice and research
are much more closely related.”
the reforms in England and Wales, it
became obvious, very quickly, that the
Review was timely for a number of
reasons. The same reasons had already
prompted reform north of the border.
The Scots had already abandoned the
existing law-based qualifications for new
broader, university-based qualifications
for their managers and, working with
the Scottish universities and the Scottish
Institute for Policing Research, had
already framed a new relationship with
Higher Education.
In most of Scandinavia and Australia,
police education had shifted almost
entirely into higher education. New
South Wales police required all recruits
to pre-qualify with a foundation
degree before joining – one of the
few university degrees where the
ability to shoot straight is part of the
examinations!
Fundamental reform
In working through my Review it was
clear that there was good support for
and strong resistance to a fundamental
reform of police training. Some of those
I consulted in the service viewed a new
relationship with higher education and
a pre-qualification as a bar to certain
types of recruit – “what if we wanted to
recruit a 35-year-old plumber?” said one
senior colleague – and a move away from
practical skills.
Others were keen that the police
service transformed its training and the
continuous professional development so
clearly lacking in the workplace. There
is, to be frank, a class-based element to
this debate, both inside and outside the
service. A number of commentators
seem to prefer their coppers thick and
conforming to a series of well-worked
stereotypes.
Modern meritocracy
There is nothing new about this. In
the 1930s, when Trenchard introduced
his scheme for direct entry, the new
graduate inspectors were caricatured
as ‘genstables’ or gentleman constables
and featured in cartoons supported by
their butlers.
Some suggested that Peel had dictated
that policing should be a working class
job by his insistence that it should not
be a profession for gentlemen. However,
this was to misunderstand that what he
meant was policing, unlike the Armed
Services of the 1820s, should be an
occupation where merit, not wealth and
class, should determine appointment
and success.
Peel’s determination for a meritocratic
police service is still highly relevant. In
my Review I tried to construct a modern
meritocracy in which both academic
attainment and occupational skills are
blended in a new training approach.
The need for technical and scientific
knowledge means that, like medicine
in the 19th century, policing now needs
to build a new relationship with higher
education, in which training, practice and
research are much more closely related.
A new professional body
But equally, the police service needs a new
professional body – a College of Policing
– with real ambitions to set the standards
for practice and the qualifications for
practitioners. There is no such body
anywhere in the world.
The Home Secretary has already
signalled agreement with the idea of
the police professional body, which was
established at the end of 2012. It has
already had a slightly difficult birth, with
arguments as to whether its leadership
should come from the profession of
policing or from outside and what
functions the body should take over.
There remains a danger that it
could simply be a rebranded NPIA or
CENTREX (the body which NPIA
subsumed) and, much as I remain proud
of the achievements of the NPIA, that
would be a mistake.
The NPIA was unable to achieve the
levels of ownership in the police service
which are crucial to success. Despite
our best efforts, we were regarded as a
branch office of the Home Office.
The College of Policing has to develop
an independence of government that
allows all those working in policing to feel
that it is theirs and provides expression
for best of police professional practice,
while remaining a devoted servant of the
public interest.
POLICING UK | 47