POLICE AND EDUCATION

Police Officers and Education



Police Officers and Education

Part 1:

The image of the police profession that is college educated is nearly a century old, and furthermore, the vision is yet unrealized. Both higher education and police are institutions that are tradition-bound with differing interests. Each occupation's internal concerns have had larger propinquity as compared to a discussion of how to come up with a curriculum of education with familiar benefit and purpose. Although improvements are observed since the 1960s, the previous problems remain prominent, at the same time as rapidly evolving technology and current events put in new ones. As contemporary challenges emerge, policing still is striving to take in the advantages of reforms and older commitments. Now is the time for a fresh exchange of ideas between academic communities and law enforcement in order to better incorporate the service and training requirements of police with education. Through considerately categorizing future and current needs, academicians and police professional might build up tools addressing both emerging challenges and lingering promises. To this end, a view on the prevailing criminal justice education system, the past of uncomfortable union of education and policing, the disparities between training and education, and the potential requirements of police could provide some assistance in order to create a well-built connection between training, education, and consequences of improved services of police.

The image has turned out to be quite complex in that in few aspects strong association between the academic world and the police has come up with the propagation of research regarding police (Reiner, 1992; Brown, 1996). Before the 1970s, there was nearly no research that was university-based on police, but currently a considerable amount of applied and fundamental research on policing has been conducted in which the police department is occasionally joint researcher and/or as paying clients (Sheptycki, 1994). Still if in reality the association between the academic world and the police is burdened with contradictions and tensions, it is yet a situation that educational achievement bestows upon the police, collectively and individually, a measure of certification and professionalism which they desire. As argued by Young (1991), the outcome is a contradiction that the police service is still experiencing:

“Even at the same time…….. a central ethic of distrust of the academic” (Pp. 37-38).

This uncomfortable association is frequently revealed in individual pathways of police officers and knowledge of the academic world and the following re-entry into operational policing ...