The National Academies Press

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Pages 22-38

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From page 22... ... There is little evidence, for example, that training alone can control corruption in government generally, get officers to take actions to prevent crime or safeguard the public, dismantle organized crime groups, or resist insurgency attacks on police stations. Nevertheless, there may be reasons to believe that police training can play an important role in accomplishing these and other worthy goals, though doing so may require a new approach of how training relates to reform. Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... That process may provide a prime opportunity to move from training-based reforms to reform-based training. In the interim, there remain several crucial questions about the content and form of police training as part of foreign assistance efforts. Read the entire page →
From page 24... ... . CONCLUSION The relationship between police training and governmental reform is an inherently political question. Read the entire page →
From page 25... ... Yet he also recognized that officers often learn more by doing their job rather than going through a formal training process. Flom reviewed the challenges of police training design and implementation from a political and policy perspec tive. Read the entire page →
From page 26... ... A more systematic approach to documenting and assessing train ing assistance efforts, including some tracking of results or even receptivity to the training, would create a written, institutional body of knowledge for future police training. Read the entire page →
From page 27... ... Our focus, instead, is on the foundational knowledge and skills that both are needed to promote fair, legal, and effective policing practices and can be integrated into a number of training programs. In the committee's view, based on its experiences with police training, much of this core knowledge is sorely absent from training curricula across countries in both the Global North and the Global South. Read the entire page →
From page 28... ... Before discussing scientific findings and the core knowledge useful for policing, we highlight our view on important supervisory skills. Later in the chapter, we expand on key skills for police organizations, informed by evidence-based approaches to policing, which are likely to be critical for promoting the rule of law and protecting the population but are currently underemphasized in police training. Read the entire page →
From page 29... ... Some assessments of officer performance might also come from analytic sources that supervisors either have to interpret or create. Training on gathering, collating, and analyzing personnel activities or even crime data to better understand officer behavior is critical. Read the entire page →
From page 30... ... KNOWLEDGE FROM CRIMINOLOGY It is the committee's evidence-informed judgment that major facts and theories from criminology, if integrated into police training curriculum, are likely to support the rule of law, protect the public, and prevent crime. Greater awareness of criminological theory and facts can help police in both the Global North and the Global South to understand the "where, why, how, who, and what" of crime problems and how interventions might disrupt the conditions or opportunities for crime. Read the entire page →
From page 31... ... . The discovery of crime concentration is the foundation for crime prevention programs targeted at specific places, including hot spots policing (Weisburd, 2015) Read the entire page →
From page 32... ... Key theories that are supported by cross-national evidence are also relevant to effective policing: • R outine Activities Theory: Crime emerges when a likely offender con verges with a suitable crime target in the absence of a capable guardian. Understanding people's everyday routines and the interaction between these routines and specific places can help officers understand why crime concentrates at certain places and times. Read the entire page →
From page 33... ... . Appreciating the routines, features, and opportunity structures in these crime-free "cool spots" can contribute to the knowledge and skills needed to apply strategies for maintaining cool spots or to cool down existing hot spots or build what is known as "collective efficacy" in local communities (Sampson et al., 1997) Read the entire page →
From page 34... ... It not only needs to be part of middle- and upper-level management education and training to improve police effectiveness and prevent crime; it also needs to be widely understood by patrol officers, who want to target hot spots at the right time and spend their job time in ways that align with the occurrence of crime problems. Concentration of Most Offences Among Few Offenders Research consistently shows that most individuals are law-abiding citizens who do not come in contact with the criminal justice system or else commit minor infractions infrequently. Read the entire page →
From page 35... ... Understanding the public's routines and the interaction between these routines and specific places can help officers understand why crime concentrates at certain places. Residual Deterrence Theory According to general deterrence theory, crime rates in an area will reduce with continued police presence and the capacity to apprehend offenders. Read the entire page →
From page 36... ... . Hot spots studies have also used short dosages of police presence to successfully create a deterrent effect in crime hot spots (see, e.g., Kochel and Weisburd, 2019; Koper et al., 2021; Koper, Wu, and Lum, 2021; Rosenfeld et al., 2014; Telep et al., 2012; Williams and Coupe, 2017) Read the entire page →
From page 37... ... . The degree to which a focused deterrence strategy could achieve similar crime reduction outcomes in other parts of the world, par ticularly countries outside the Global North, is unknown. Read the entire page →
From page 38... ... Neyroud's (2018) systematic narrative review of 31 studies explored the level of suicidal ideation within perpetrators of domestic homicide (as well as those of mass shootings and suicide terrorism) Read the entire page →

From page 22...

... There is little evidence, for example, that training alone can control corruption in government generally, get officers to take actions to prevent crime or safeguard the public, dismantle organized crime groups, or resist insurgency attacks on police stations. Nevertheless, there may be reasons to believe that police training can play an important role in accomplishing these and other worthy goals, though doing so may require a new approach of how training relates to reform.