Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation
Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation
Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation
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THE POLICE REFORM PROGRAMME<br />
“<strong>Policing</strong> now needs to build a new<br />
relationship with higher education, in<br />
which training, practice and research<br />
are much more closely related.”<br />
the reforms in England and Wales, it<br />
became obvious, very quickly, that the<br />
Review was timely for a number of<br />
reasons. The same reasons had already<br />
prompted reform north of the border.<br />
The Scots had already abandoned the<br />
existing law-based qualifications for new<br />
broader, university-based qualifications<br />
for their managers and, working with<br />
the Scottish universities and the Scottish<br />
Institute for <strong>Policing</strong> Research, had<br />
already framed a new relationship with<br />
Higher Education.<br />
In most of Scandinavia and Australia,<br />
police education had shifted almost<br />
entirely into higher education. New<br />
South Wales police required all recruits<br />
to pre-qualify with a foundation<br />
degree before joining – one of the<br />
few university degrees where the<br />
ability to shoot straight is part of the<br />
examinations!<br />
Fundamental reform<br />
In working through my Review it was<br />
clear that there was good support for<br />
and strong resistance to a fundamental<br />
reform of police training. Some of those<br />
I consulted in the service viewed a new<br />
relationship with higher education and<br />
a pre-qualification as a bar to certain<br />
types of recruit – “what if we wanted to<br />
recruit a 35-year-old plumber?” said one<br />
senior colleague – and a move away from<br />
practical skills.<br />
Others were keen that the police<br />
service transformed its training and the<br />
continuous professional development so<br />
clearly lacking in the workplace. There<br />
is, to be frank, a class-based element to<br />
this debate, both inside and outside the<br />
service. A number of commentators<br />
seem to prefer their coppers thick and<br />
conforming to a series of well-worked<br />
stereotypes.<br />
Modern meritocracy<br />
There is nothing new about this. In<br />
the 1930s, when Trenchard introduced<br />
his scheme for direct entry, the new<br />
graduate inspectors were caricatured<br />
as ‘genstables’ or gentleman constables<br />
and featured in cartoons supported by<br />
their butlers.<br />
Some suggested that Peel had dictated<br />
that policing should be a working class<br />
job by his insistence that it should not<br />
be a profession for gentlemen. However,<br />
this was to misunderstand that what he<br />
meant was policing, unlike the Armed<br />
Services of the 1820s, should be an<br />
occupation where merit, not wealth and<br />
class, should determine appointment<br />
and success.<br />
Peel’s determination for a meritocratic<br />
police service is still highly relevant. In<br />
my Review I tried to construct a modern<br />
meritocracy in which both academic<br />
attainment and occupational skills are<br />
blended in a new training approach.<br />
The need for technical and scientific<br />
knowledge means that, like medicine<br />
in the 19th century, policing now needs<br />
to build a new relationship with higher<br />
education, in which training, practice and<br />
research are much more closely related.<br />
A new professional body<br />
But equally, the police service needs a new<br />
professional body – a College of <strong>Policing</strong><br />
– with real ambitions to set the standards<br />
for practice and the qualifications for<br />
practitioners. There is no such body<br />
anywhere in the world.<br />
The Home Secretary has already<br />
signalled agreement with the idea of<br />
the police professional body, which was<br />
established at the end of 2012. It has<br />
already had a slightly difficult birth, with<br />
arguments as to whether its leadership<br />
should come from the profession of<br />
policing or from outside and what<br />
functions the body should take over.<br />
There remains a danger that it<br />
could simply be a rebranded NPIA or<br />
CENTREX (the body which NPIA<br />
subsumed) and, much as I remain proud<br />
of the achievements of the NPIA, that<br />
would be a mistake.<br />
The NPIA was unable to achieve the<br />
levels of ownership in the police service<br />
which are crucial to success. Despite<br />
our best efforts, we were regarded as a<br />
branch office of the Home Office.<br />
The College of <strong>Policing</strong> has to develop<br />
an independence of government that<br />
allows all those working in policing to feel<br />
that it is theirs and provides expression<br />
for best of police professional practice,<br />
while remaining a devoted servant of the<br />
public interest.<br />
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