This article was downloaded by: [European Association of Psychology and Law] On: 11 December 2014, At: 12:40 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Psychology, Crime & Law Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gpcl20 Evaluation of police recruit training involving psychology Ray Bull a & Peter Horncastle b a Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 2ER, UK b PA Consulting Group, 123 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1 9SA, UK Published online: 04 Jan 2008. To cite this article: Ray Bull & Peter Horncastle (1994) Evaluation of police recruit training involving psychology, Psychology, Crime & Law, 1:2, 143-149 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10683169408411947 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
Psychology. Crime & bw (1994) Vol. 1. pp 143-149 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only 0 1994 Hanvood Academic Publishen GmbH Printed in the United States of America EVALUATION OF POLICE RECRUIT TRAINING INVOLVING PSYCHOLOGY RAY BULL* and PETER HORNCASTLEt *Department of Psychology, Universiry of Portsmouth, Portsmouth POI 2ER. Uk tpa Consulring Group, 123 Buckingham Palace R od London SWl9SA. Uk This paper provides a brief ovemew of a five-ycar long evaluation project involving psychology and police training. In the 1980s the Landon Metropolitan Police ma& substantial changes to the initial training course that new recruits receive. Assessments of the effativeners of this training (as rcvealed by extant and specially designed quationnaim. by observations of police behaviour. by interviews with memben of Ihe public who had interacted with police officen. and by complaints dam) arc mported. The on-going evaluation provided fadback and guidance (some was positive, some was negative) to the police force, which acted upon all UIC recommendations made. Key words: police: training: evaluation; personality; complaints. INTRODUCTlON In March 1981, before the disturbances in Brixton and other parts of London, a working party was formed in the London Metropolitan Police with a mandate to examine and to report on all cumnt methods of formal and informal behavioural training for recruits and probationers (i.e. those in their first two years of service) and to make recommendations for improvements in these. From the findings of the working party came recommendations to develop what became Human Awareness Training (HAT). The first version of this training was implemented by the Metropolitan Police in April 1982. In June of the same year the independent evaluation described in this paper began under the auspices of the Police Foundation and at the request of the police. Our evaluation began not only after the training had been designed, but some months after it had been implemented. Thus, a before and after study was not possible. However, such evaluations are rarely organized and conducted under ideal circumstances. Nevertheless, our yearly reports to the London Police were to lead them to amend aspects of the training each year. Human Awareness Training comprises three related areas of training: interpersonal skills (said to embody conversational skills and the ability to manage encounters with others); self-awareness (self-knowledge and insight into one s effect on social situations); and community relations (embracing awareness of and knowledge about different cultures and subcultures). The training programme, designed by police officers with a background in the behavioural sciences, accounts for approximately a quarter of the initial 20-week training course for those recruited to the Metropolitan Police. Much of the training is practical in its approach, and considerable use is made of such teaching techniques as role-play exercises and video feedback of students performance. *Author for compondenee. 143
144 R. BULL AND P.HORNCASTLE The aim of the training (as stated by the Metropolitan Police, in 1985-6) were that the recruit should: reflect credit upon the police force in appearance and behaviour on and off duty; be capable of dealing impartially with people irrespective of background or circumstances; identify how hidher personality affects others; display knowledge of how people are likely to respond in given circumstances; display professionalism in handling and concluding a wide variety of incidents; show skill in recalling events and in helping others to do so; identify the effect of group behaviour upon members of both the police and public; apply a wide variety of interpersonal skills when dealing with members of the public; understand the customs, viewpoints and traditions of minorities; demonstrate flexibility and judgement in dealing with varied situations. AN OUTLINE OF PHASE ONE OF THE EVALUATION The behavioural science literature on attitude and social skills training evaluation was reviewed with that on police training to identify appropriate standardized, valid and reliable questionnaires which had been used in similar Ends of situations. "bo groups of recruits (31 per group) completed these questionnaires in Week 1 and in Week 20 (i.e. at the end) of initial training, then again six months and twelve months during their probationary period. The questionnaires used were as follows: 0 a social-evaluative anxiety questionnaire (measures social avoidance and distress); 0 a self-esteem questionnaire (measures perceived interpersonal threat; self esteem; faith in people; and sensitivity to criticism); 0 an interpersonal relations questionnaire (measures need to establish satisfactory relationships: need to control them; and need for affection). Groups of around 30 officers each answered the questionnaires. These questionnaires were supplemented by one specifically designed to assess the attitudes, beliefs and behavioural set which the training aimed to inculcate. This instrument, subsequently called the recruit training questionnaire (RTQ). was administered to two groups of officers (n = 30) on the four testing occasions. In addition, data concerning complaints made about the police by members of the public were gathered, as were supervisors' comments. Summary of Findings (Phase One) Social-evaluative anxiety questionnaire Police constables have to enter social situations which are often characterized by conflict between the participants or overt aggression. Constables may have to initiate interactions
POLICERECRUITTRAINING 145 with members of the public in order to control or manipulate their behaviour, often against the other s will. To manage such social interaction constables need to be able to control the anxiety which such situations engender and be able to put up with the negative evaluations made of them by those with whom they must interact. For obvious reasons police constables must not avoid entering social situations, however unpleasant these situations may appear. The social-evaluative anxiety questionnaire can be used to generate two measures: (i) (ii) the tendency to be distressed and to avoid social situations; the tendency to be afraid of being negatively evaluated by others. With respect to the task of the constable, social distress, avoidance and fear of negative evaluation are prima facie undesirable characteristics, and one of HATS aims shouldbe to minimize recruits tendencies in these directions. Officers scores decreased progressively and significantly over the testing period (from 13.27 to 7.39). Not only did the above tendencies decline significantly during HAT but they continued to decline during probation. However, the changes during initial training were larger than after it. While it is not possible to identify precisely the cause of this effect from the evaluation design, the utility of the questionnaire is established in this context and the effect in line with HAT objectives is powerful suggestive evidence. Recruit training questionnaite With regard to our own especially constructed recruit training questionnaire, this questionnaire was sensitive enough as a research instrument to generate some significantly different scores between the beginning and end of the study period. However, these changes were often in the opposite direction to that predicted from the training Objectives. More recruits, for example, disagreed with the idea that social science concepts would be useful to them at the end of the course than at the beginning. Fewer trainees thought they would try to understand minority viewpoints by the end of training than at the beginning. Likewise, the importance attached to community relations decreased over training. The welfdservice aspect of police work remained important to trainees but declined in importance for probationers once they began operational duties. One or two beliefs and attitudes changes in appropriate ways. Notably fairness and trustworthiness grew in importance as characteristics of the good police officer. But overall, basic attitudes and beliefs remained much the same, and given that the effect of training is being pitted against a lifetime of family and school experience, this is scarcely surprising. On balance it must be said, however, that such changes as we observed were more in line with the expected peer group effect and institutional effect than they were in line with avowed intentions of the human awareness component of the course. The other two questionnaires used (i.e. self-esteem and interpersonal relations) revealed few significant differences over time. Complaints How supervisors respond to probationers and how the public respond to them are two crude but vital indicators of the success of initial training. Space prevents mention of our work on supervisors assessment, but mention can be made of complaints data. With the assistance of the Complaints Investigation Bureau at Scotland Yard a comparison was made of complaints
146 R. BULL AND P.HORNCASTLE made against police officers trained under the new system with those trained a year earlier under the old system. Data on police complaints often reveal a relationship between frequency of complaints and length of service. Consequently, the two samples needed to be matched in terms of length of service. It was found that the HAT-trained officers received 17% fewer complaints per officer, per month of service, compared to the officers trained under the older system. This difference was found not to be due to those officers having, on average, 12 months longer police service. When the complaints data were statistically analysed with regard to the number of complaints per officer, per month of service, the difference in these two sets of data would have occurred by chance in only eight out of 1OOoccasions. Thus, the 17% reduction in the rate of complaints was probably no& achance finding but seems likely to have been a result of the training, as this was the major factor consistently differentiating the two groups of subjects. While tying this reduction to HAT specifically is problematic, HAT, which emphasises the discretionary role of the police officer, at least cannot be said to increase the probability of officers so trained incumng complaints. Phase One Conclusion It was our recommendation that the Metropolitan Police's recruit training programme in human awareness was a worthwhile achievement of considerable substance and promise. However, we were concerned by whether the achievements of the initial training were to some extent dissipated by post-initial training experiences. Now that the force's initial recruit training in HAT appeared to be operating with considerable efficiency it seemed appropriate to determine the extent to which the effects of this training were manifested in constables' policing behaviour. Partly in the light of the information presented so far, the Metropolitan Police agreed to fund a second phase of the evaluation. This second phase examined the extent to which officers were putting HAT skills into practice on the street. By this time the title of the training has been changed from Human Awareness Training to Policing Skills Training (PST). PHASE TWO OF THE EVALUATION Three components for the phase two evaluation were agreed upon: 1. Psychometric evaluation Four valid and reliable questionnaires were completed by officers at the end (week 20) of initial training and then again 20,40 and 66 weeks later. These week 40,60 and 86 testing dates coincided with the completion of the Street Duties Course (Part l), the Street Duties Course (Part 2) and Continuation Training Classes (Part2) under the them-current probationer training programme. The questionnaires used were as follows (with the first three having been used in phase one): a social-evaluative anxiety questionnaire; a self-esteem questionnaire;
POLICERECRUITTRALNING 147 an interpersonal relations questionnaire; a self-monitoring questionnaire (measures amount of self-observation and self-control). These four questionnaires were completed by three cohorts of 40 officers. Additionally, one other questionnaire was used which we specifically designed to assess the attitudes, beliefs and behavioural set which PST aimed to inculcate, especially those attitudes concerned with the use of discretion in police work. This instrument, subsequently called the District Training Questionnaire (DTQ), was administered to two groups of officers (61 in total) on the four testing occasions. (The DTQ was based, in part, on the Recruit Training Questionnaire employed in phase one.) As with the first phase of the evaluation, it was not possible to use police recruits as controls. As scores were obtained over time. subjects acted as their own control and, provided the training had a systematic effect, then scores over time should have exhibited some significant and coherent pattern of change. 2. Patrol observation study In order to examine the utility of PST in the field a sample of 64 police officers with between 18 and 43 months service (i.e. those who received PST after most of the authors phase one recommendations had been implemented) were accompanied on patrol on one or more days by one or two trained observers. This observational evaluation took place in each of eight police stations which together formed a representative sample of policing opportunities in London. Observations were made according to our speciallydesigned schedule containing some 89 data scales. Observers recorded data on 550 police officer-citizen encounters. On some occasions two observers accompanied an officer on patrol. This was for two reasons. One was to gather data on the inter-judge reliability of the behavioural observations and the other was to conduct the third component of the evaluation: interviewing the participants of encounters. 3. Interviewing the participants of encounters On fifty occasions observers conducted interviews with a constable and with an encountered member of the public (separately) once an encounter had finished. The questionnaires used for these interviews were concerned not only with the respondents view of the behaviour objectively recorded (but not disclosed) by the observers, but also with matters which may be important in police-citizen encounters which were not easy to observe objectively (e.g. inner feelings). Summary of Findings (Phase Two) 1. Psychometric evaluation Officers scores indicative of distress, avoidance and fear of negative evaluation by others in social situations decreased progressively and significantly during the period over which we tested them (from 14.81 to 9.74). (A similar result was reported in phase one.) These findings are in line with the aims of PST. However, at the end of the initial twenty-week training,
148 R. BULL AND P. HORNCASTLE phase two officers scores on these dimensions were higher (and hence less in line with the aims of PST) than phase one officers scores had been at the same point in their training (14.81 vs. 10.33). Such a finding might indicate a deterioration in training standards. As we found in phase one, the other extant psychometric questionnaire revealed very few significant changes. On the district training questionnaire, like the phase one officers, the phase two officers had some favourable attitudes towards the training at the end of initial training. (Their views were, if anything, more positive then phase one officers had been.) However, they tended to become rather more undecided about the usefulness of their training as they gained operational experience. This was particularly true for the race awareness aspects of training. For example; as their probationary period progressed, officers placed less emphasis on the importance of trying to understand the customs, viewpoints and traditions of minority groups. 2. Patmi observation study The six-month observation period allowed the researchers to gather quantitative and qualitative data on 550 encounters between PSToficers and members of the public. The effects of observers on officers behaviour was judged to be minimal, and there was a high degree of reliability between the observers perceptions of encounters. The incidents observed involved a large numberof occasions where police officers had the potential to use theirdiscretion in dealing with the public. In a majority of encounters the police officers observed showed themselves to be competent managers of people. Many of the specific people handling skills which instructors attempt to impart to recruits during their initial training were effectively translated into desirable, professional behaviour on the streets (e.g. conducting stops on the street, opening encounters, handling disputes between people, control of self and other s aggression). However, there were several areas of police performance which were less effective and which did not fully meet the stated intentions of initial training (e.g. the interviewing of a number of victims of crime was less effective than it could have been, as was the use of a multi-agency approach to the treatment of victims). Other areas of performance were more variable: these included self-monitoring ability, closing encounters and interviewing skills. 3. Interviewing the participants of encounters The fifty interviews with police officers and members of the public after an encounter involved a wide variety of different encounters (some 44% involved traftic-related matters in which the member of the public had committed an offence). The public s evaluation of officers performance was usually favourable. This trend was evident regardless (in most cases) of the status of the individual concerned (it. whether they were an offender, witness, informant, etc.). Officers who were interviewed tended to underestimate the views held by the member of the public concerning the quality of the various policing skills they had demonstrated. They also tended to evaluate members of the public less favourably on certain dimensions (e.g. compliance, satisfaction, disposition to the police service) than those members of the public viewed themselves. Such findings have important implications for the aspects of initial Policing Skills Training which deal with issues such as stereotyping and self-evaluation.
POLICE RECRUIT TRAINING 149 Recommendations (Phase Two) Our phase two evaluation provided little evidence to suggest that the concepts and skills which Policing Skills Training sought to impart to recruits were significantly undermined by those recruits' subsequent operational experience. While the training had many strengths, there none the less remained areas in which it could be improved. Our evidence suggested that further thought should be given to the following: (i) (ii) (iii) At the end of initial training, recruits' ability to monitor their own behaviour and their sensitivity to the expression and self-presentation of others was not as good as it might be. This ability did not improve with subsequent operational experience. While patrolling officers were observed to be competent managers of the people they encountered, they sometimes found difficulty in closing encounters. The selfevaluation and selfawareness components of PST should be enhanced and assessment of them examined. As their probation proceeds, probationers became less positive about the Policing Skills Training they received. In the police force as a whole misunderstandings about the nature and objectives of PST were fairly common. The force should consider ways in which it can continue to reinforce the values which recruit training seeks to impart. The programme of force-wide Policing Skills Training (which sought to inform all officers recruited before the introduction of PST about what PST is) needed to be given full support by all ranks. One of the goals of PST is that officers understand and are sympathetic towards victims. Officers did not always appear to show sympathy for victims, nor were they always aware of local arrangements for refemng victims to other agencies. In some cases local policy on dealing with victims was at variance with what officers had been taught was desirable: in other words officers lacked the opportunity to put into practice what they had learned. The force needed to reexamine its policy towards victim support so that local policy and what is taught as desirable practice are brought more into line with one another. CONCLUSION Our recommendations were based on the belief that it is important that trainees find the objectives of their training to be compatible with those of the force as a whole. We felt that such compatibility did not exist in all parts of the force. We concluded that Policing Skills Training marked an important turning point in police training. We judged it to be a most worthwhile development which merits the considerable funding and other support it stillreceives from the force. Since receiving out final report the London Metropolitan Police has acted on all its recommendations.