Police Training to Promote the Rule of Law and Protect the Population (2022) / Chapter Skim
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3 Knowledge and Skills for Policing
3 Knowledge and Skills for Policing
Pages 27-48
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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.
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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.
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From page 29... ...
They may be needed to guide officers in problem-solving or critical thinking and, therefore, they must know not only what officers are taught, but perhaps what trainers know when they are teaching officers. Supervisors also need to be able to identify when officers deviate from their training.
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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.
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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)
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From page 32... ...
• Residual Deterrence Theory: Short periods of police presence in a crime hot spot predict longer periods of no crime or disorder after police leave, not only at the immediate location of patrol but also in the surrounding vicinity. • Displacement of Crime Falsified: Many believe that if police target crime hot spots, crime will just move from one place to another.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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From page 38... ...
Training on these issues might encourage police leaders to launch digital records systems and collaborative relations with social agencies needed to identify the most dangerous domestic abusers. Where information is available, threats or attempts of suicide by the future murderer may be the best way to predict homicidal behavior in a relationship.
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From page 39... ...
By increasing officer presence at these places and adjusting or mitigating the environmental, social, and physical characteristics that contribute to crime concentration, crime can be prevented without the threat of displacement. As discussed earlier, effective place-based approaches specifically target micro-geographic locations, also known as hot spots, rather than the larger neighborhoods or communities that envelop them.
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From page 40... ...
committee on proactive policing indicate that problem-solving and focused deterrence efforts related to crime hot spots can help to reduce crime. Community engagement in hot spots -- while it alone may not necessarily reduce crime -- could also improve citizen satisfaction and perceptions of the police and aid in problem-solving efforts.
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From page 41... ...
use problem-oriented policing, proactivity and crime analysis, community- and citizen-centric approaches, or geographic targeting that require critical and creative thinking skills. Critical thinking skills include an array of dispositions and have been defined by several groups and scholars.
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From page 42... ...
Accurate counts of crime and measurement of trends in crime as well as outcomes of police interventions are essential for tracking and maintaining police effectiveness. Examples of useful measurements include crime-mapping of high- frequency and high-harm "hot spots," rank-ordering of the most frequently or seriously harmed repeat victims, rank-ordering of people returning from prison to local communities by their prior or predicted seriousness of offending, forecasting the highest-risk places and people likely to suffer high harm from violence or other crime, counting indicators of internal challenges such as officer absenteeism and public complaints, and tracking the before-and-after differences in the effects of police policy changes.
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From page 43... ...
. Improved interactions between police officers and the public could also benefit from a training curriculum on police legitimacy and procedural justice.
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From page 44... ...
The committee will examine policies and practices to reduce officer use of force and effective training methods on this topic in its third report. Communicating, Collaborating, and Building Multiagency Partnerships The facts and theories about crime and crime prevention discussed above can be drawn on to help police understand why working cooperatively with other service providers, such as child social services, educational services, healthcare workers, and therapists, can in some cases prevent crime more effectively than prosecution and imprisonment.
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From page 45... ...
Another skill that cuts across many aspects of efforts to protect victims is interviewing. Some of these skills are taught in existing training modules, such as procedural justice training and specialist hostage negotiation training.
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From page 46... ...
evaluated integrated responses to domestic violence,8 identifying some common benefits such as "a broader range of services that are offered beyond the initial crisis period, improve ment of the professional knowledge base and service provider relationships, facilitation of responsive and prompt decision-making, increased cross program or agency collaboration on case management, and provision of multiple entry points for clients to access support" (2016, p.
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From page 47... ...
. Such research knowledge needs to be translated into digestible forms that officers can easily understand, including the stories of research projects and successes in crime prevention, so they can institutionalize that knowledge into actual police tactics, operations, strategies, and technologies (Lum and Koper, 2017)
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