The police education qualification framework: a professional agenda or building professionals?

ABSTRACT

Given the growing complexity in British policing, the College of Policing are implementing a Police Education Qualification Framework through a professionalization agenda. This aims to standardise entry to the police and allow serving officers to gain accreditation for their previous training and experience. Part of this process involves the development of a national police curriculum for higher education institutions to deliver to new recruits. Different definitions of what constitutes professionalism can impact on officers’ interpretations of this concept and how they subsequently engage with the proposed reforms. This paper, which is based on in depth qualitative interviews with serving officers who have undertaken an academic qualification in policing, suggests that the relationship between police education and the development of professionalism is complex. Officers need to be trusted and encouraged to use their learning in a way that develops their own personal sense of professionalism. However, this paper will argue that current perceptions amongst officers are sceptical of the wider agenda and brings into question the development of a standardised curriculum which may ultimately be viewed as further governance over officer behaviour.     

Meet the new boss: Institutional change and loose coupling in parole and probation

The authors use the institutional theory of organizations to argue that historical changes in parole and probation are ceremonial in the sense that they are aimed at an institutional audience and have had little effect on the day-to-day work of line-level officers. A review of the history of community corrections in the US suggests that parole and probation can be described in four eras, each era marked by a particular pattern of institutional authority and by corresponding changes in the structure, goals, and policies of parole and probation. By loosely coupling the work of street-level parole and probation agents to organizational goals and policies and minimizing caseload problems via surveillance and information-gathering techniques, the day-to-day activity of parole and probation officers has been largely unaffected.