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Educating and training the future police officer

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, Jan, 2004 by Michael Buerger

The vision of a college-educated police profession is a dream almost a century old and, moreover, a dream still unrealized. Both policing and higher education are tradition-bound institutions with divergent interests. The internal concerns of each occupation has had greater immediacy than a discussion of how to build an educational curriculum with common purpose and benefit. Though advancements have been made since the 1960s, the old issues remain salient, even as current events and rapidly evolving technology add new ones.

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As new challenges present themselves, policing still is struggling to realize the benefits of older commitments and reforms. It is time for a new dialogue between the law enforcement and academic communities to better integrate education with the training and service needs of agencies. By cooperatively identifying current and future needs, police professionals and academicians may develop tools to address both lingering promises and emerging challenges. To this end, a look at the existing system of criminal justice education, the history of the uneasy alliance of policing and education, the differences between education and training, and the future needs of the law enforcement profession can offer some guidance for creating a stronger link between education, training, and an end result of improved police services. (1)

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A THREE-TIERED SYSTEM

Over the years, criminal justice education has developed three distinct types of programs, linked in many ways to the entry-level qualifications of policing. The first step on the ladder remains the high school diploma or general equivalency degree (GED), which seems to depict the "industry standard" despite considerable change elsewhere. An improvement over the previous era's lack of educational standards, it, nonetheless, remains a relatively modest criterion. Once hired, the recruit attends a police training academy (ranging from about 400 hours to almost a year, depending upon jurisdiction) to study a wide range of topics, most of which the state Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) Board or equivalent body has mandated. Topics covered include domestic violence, defensive driving, multiculturalism, interpersonal communications, firearms retention, the criminal code, basics of forensics, introduction to weapons of mass destruction, and many others compressed into as short a program as possible.

The associate degree, a 2-year program, constitutes the middle rung on the higher education ladder. Some programs offer purely academic courses; others incorporate basic law enforcement certification into their 2-year curricula. Many states have integrated their mandate-based police training into their 2-year programs on a preservice basis. Students who complete criminal justice programs in those settings often earn both an associate degree and certification necessary for employment.

At the third level, an increasing number of police agencies now require the 4-year bachelor's degree as a hiring credential. Generally regarded as part of the social sciences, 4-year criminal justice programs focus more on research than on skills training, in accordance with long-standing dictates of the disciplines. Students learn criminal justice from a systems perspective and generally are taught skills in research methods and statistics, rather than interviewing or managing problem individuals. Bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees are awarded either by an independent criminal justice department or from programs within another discipline, typically sociology, public affairs, or political science. The 4-year programs continue to follow the social science model, offering knowledge about the system and developing skills to study the system. Training academies instill the skills to function adequately within the field as currently constituted (and hopefully lay the ground-work for successfully coping with changes in the social and legal environments).

Speaking broadly, the law enforcement profession apparently has not known what to do with a college education. Although college-educated persons have succeeded in policing, "education" seems to remain tied in an abstract way to professionalization and more optional than necessary. For example, the degree from the substandard institution can carry as much weight as that from a flagship university; professional development through additional training can count as much or more in promotional processes than mere education; and training itself still begins at the level of the least skilled, rather than the more educated. In addition, the assertion that the credential indicates a more rounded person, of broader vision, who can be molded into a superior police officer remains difficult to prove in more than anecdotal terms. Nor has the criminal justice degree necessarily proven itself valuable as a preparation credential; after all, many of today's college-educated officers hold degrees from other disciplines, ranging from English literature to chemical engineering.

Government Industry

Educating and training the future police officer

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, Jan, 2004 by Michael Buerger

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