6 Police training
One of the most basic ways that police forces have attempted to instil and raise professional standards has been via training and close management of officers. Training was initially very rudimentary.
Figure 9: Constables are taught road safety at the HQ of the West Riding police in Yorkshire. Car ownership was increasing rapidly in the 1930s, and traffic control was occupying more and more police time. The highest ever recorded number of road traffic deaths was in 1934. [Description: A black and white photograph of male uniformed police officers sitting at desks in a classroom facing a uniformed police instructor who is standing at the front. The instructor is using a stick to point to a diagram on a blackboard of two cars colliding at a junction.] Source: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/class-of-constables-being-taught-road-safety-in-one-of-the-news-photo/1053486726?adppopup=true
When the Metropolitan Police were set up in 1829, entry requirements were basic:
1st. To be under 35 years of age.
2nd. To stand clear 5 feet 7 inches without shoes.
3rd. To read and write.
4th. To be free from any bodily complaint, of a strong constitution, and generally intelligent, according to the judgement of the Chief Surgeon of the Police.
Beyond this, selected candidates were entered into a two-week ‘Preparatory Class’ for instruction in general duties and drill. While primarily practical, training manuals had a strong focus on personal conduct. One from Manchester Police in 1836, for example, noted:
Integrity, sobriety, intelligence, a systematic correctness in business, civility and humanity, are the leading qualifications of a good Police Office.
Where was an exhortation to professionalism in the nineteenth century, initial training was rudimentary and most learning was undertaken ‘on the job’.
A specialised Metropolitan Police Training School was set up in 1907, but the report of the Desborough Committee (1919) recommended that ‘the system of training and education be improved and assimilated throughout the Police Service’.
By the 1930s, most forces were sending new recruits for around 12 weeks’ training and, after the Second World War, the MPS Training School was established at Hendon, offering a 17-week foundational course for recruit constables. Outside of London, growing investment saw the establishment of regional District Training Centres (DTCs), with a committee of Chief Constables responsible for curriculum design. For a light-hearted recollection of local police training in the 1960s, see this article [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] moved from footnote.
During the 1980s, in the wake of the Scarman Report, investigations into police training identified ‘need for a fundamental review of the initial training of police officers’ (Peacock, 2010, p. 97). Better training was again seen as a route to raising profession standards and public trust.
As late as the 1990s, however, DTCs were delivering training which was ‘still run along militaristic lines, with a focus on fitness, disciplines, drills, law and procedure’ (Maile, 2023, p. 4).
Progress was slow, such that the HMIC warned in 2002 that:
… if the Service is to be viewed as a profession, the initial training and development provided must be comparable with other professions.
From this point onwards, significant strides have been made in modernising and reforming police training, culminating the introduction of the Police Education Qualification Framework (PEQF) of 2016.
While police training was relatively rudimentary for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a ‘professionalisation agenda’ has eventually driven a shift away from vocational training to higher level degree or degree type offerings across the service.