Police in New Zealand
The young police
In its different axes, the reforms of the training program of the new police in Australia follow a trend that began eighty years ago when the United States reformer August Vollmer recruited the first university agents in the city of Berkley. However, it continues to be a controversial program. The ability of a university is questioned to form the police and the value of insisting on such high academic standards. There is still a certain suspicion towards the "university students" and there is a police sector that says that the worst thing that can happen to a policeman is to stop to reflect instead of reacting. They argue that the only requirement to be a policeman is having discipline and practical sense. In addition, it is feared that agents with university studies will feel little satisfied with a job that in many ways is routine, implies danger, requires night shifts and imposes destination transfers.Finally, there is another sector that is threatened ascent if you have to compete with young people with more academic preparation.
The impact on the labor market and income as new police officers is also questioned. The increase in the educational level that requires many young people who previously constituted a good police quarry, if until recently being a police officer was a job option for young people without studies and a social promotion way of the working class, now it is feared to becomerather in a middle class profession and that, therefore, closes another labor exit for an important sector of society, which would include many members of ethnic minorities. The bodies that want to demand university training from new police officers should monitor that this does not have a negative impact on their efforts to increase the number of police from ethnic minorities. The ‘bridge’ courses aimed at those sectors are usually a key piece in the attempt to ensure access to employment to the police.
Continuous training
Once in service, the agents have a wide range of courses that have completed to update their knowledge and to prepare for the ascent to higher positions. More and more bodies are limited to offering with their means only strict training in the field of police work and outsourcing everything else through universities and professional training centers. The definition of what is strictly understood by training in the police changes changes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Generally, the formative aspects related to crimes investigation and operational procedures are the only. Also, theoretically external training affects specialized fields. As more and more police go to the education sector, police training centers acquire greater training capacity on specialized issues. The Charles Sturt University offers specialization courses on research methods attended by police together with other researchers from other government and private companies departments.
Anyway, a way to articulate internal training with external is always sought. All bodies have signed agreements so that most internal courses are approved to receive credits in external degrees. The police complete the internal courses and then "change" the credits to be able to complete a homologous degree. It should be mentioned that a significant percentage of the training courses is at a distance, given the great geographical extension of the country, this type of education has a long tradition in Australia and has always been a respected modality. Police training programs combine the sending of materials for self-learning with short care periods and with a work support system in the workplace. Police districts normally have educators who are responsible for protection of agents learning.
The high positions
If the new training systems of the new recruits can be considered as an attempt to raise the cultural level of the police "pushing from below", simultaneously it is also trying to "stretch from above". All jurisdictions in Australia have made it very clear that if an agent wants to take a high position in the 21st century police, they must have, in addition to the professional merits, postgraduate studies, the management of the new millennium’s police work needs both aGood knowledge of administrative sciences as analytical capacity, intellectual curiosity and knowledge social, political and historical contexts. In addition, if young street police must be university students, their superiors must also be. Therefore, several specific degrees for the Police are offered through universities and participation in these or other general degrees is encouraged. The fact is that many police officers choose to follow more general courses, such as MBA, or training in useful fields for police work, but not necessarily restricted to their work, such as Criminology and Forensic Psychology. An example of the degrees aimed at the Police is the Public Management and Policies Program of the School of Higher Studies of Police Management and Directorate of the Charles Sturt University. The school was created as a result of the agreement between the Australasia Police Chief Conference and the Charles Sturt University and was located on the same campus as a high -position training center, one of the common services that has been commented above. It offers four third -cycle courses at a distance: a postgraduate certificate, a postgraduate diploma, a master’s degree and a doctorate. At the same time, internal training and leadership training programs are being organized. These programs provide specific courses for each jurisdiction and ensure that all high positions have some preparation on management issues, have the training they have. But above all internal courses open a path to university external training, especially for agents who do not have previous university studies.
One of the difficulties that Australian jurisdictions have had in demanding postgraduate training for high positions has been that the vast majority had no formal studies. Most entered as young ‘cadets’ with the previous recruitment system and their only training has been the internal vocational. Despite the wide internal offer, both in courses of police techniques and training for
The promotion, many agents did not have the necessary preparation to successfully address university studies. For this reason, many internal courses now have as more academic contents than the previous. Charles Sturt’s programs, for example, admit agents with a minimum of eight years of directive experience in the postgraduate certificate without demanding any degree. In order to continue in the program, they must get an average note of good in the four subjects of the certificate.
If they do not get it, they are encouraged to complete a degree before continuing postgraduate studies.
One of the controversies about this new formation has aroused the question of the one who should assume the costs. If the agents have not had to contribute to it, since everything was organized within the same body, the new criterion of demanding them external formation has caused that they now have to suffer from their pocket.
In this sense, the police are promoting the same development policy the human resources currently used by private companies and other public sector departments. In this way, agents should not contribute so much in their training and the workers of other sectors;In recognition of the public interest of police training, the government has maintained subsidies for postgraduate courses that had cut in other work sectors and the same police forces also have scholarship systems. However, most of the high positions must now assume a part of the cost of their training in a degree that would have been unthinkable until recently. Although there is consensus when stating that the improvement of the level of training has had a positive impact on directive capacities, it is also true that it has caused a negative consequence: a large number of agents that once trained realize that the combination of theirPolice experience with university studies opens a wide range of job opportunities. Thus, it has been achieved the objective of ensuring that the agents are versatile and can be equated in training civilians, but with the cost of providing them with the means to transfer their training and experience in other labor markets.
If traditionally an agent spent his entire working life in the body, there is currently a constant flow of well -trained agents that find more lucrative offers in the private sector. This has been compensated to some extent with the new opportunities for side tickets, such as civil officials of the bodies, but there are many more high -level agents who leave the body than not civilians who enter, and also, civilians do not provide experienceProfessional in Security, a consequence of this is that the police want more and more generic and versatile qualifications that also have value in the labor market external to the police sector instead of degrees that carry a police label. A part of the loss of agents formed is the one that derives towards the education sector. With the increase in police training through universities and other training centers, a new teacher market for prior experience in citizen security has been created. As the university sector requires third -cycle degrees and there are still few agents who have completed them, there are currently a certain shortage of candidates for teacher places in fields related to the police.
New trends in training
In addition to commenting on the reforms from the perspective of the different officers’ stripes, it is important to highlight two transverse currents that are key to understanding the formative news of the Australian police.
Training for skills and competencies
In addition to the training for degrees, another is being developed for professional skills and competences, following a general tendency in the evolution of the training and training of all professions in Australia. There is a very widespread process of defining the skills and knowledge necessary to fulfill the functions of a job and its execution standards. It is made from a detailed analysis of the place in question. Since 1994 there is a national training entity and a series of advisory advice on training for each trade that are responsible for the jobs, the determination of the skills and knowledge necessary for these places and the design of training courses for training courses for training courses for these places andrespond to training needs. The definition of the skills for each trade and the necessary training to prepare people to exercise it began in the industrial sectors and in the unqualified works, but it has also been extended to the sector of services and qualified works. The objective is to facilitate the provision of very specific training and, thus, ensure that companies and industries have qualified personnel for each place. The trade of citizen security has gone a bit to the tail of this trend, but current police work is also being analyzed and training programs are designed to respond to the needs of each place. The Advisory Council on Public Security Training and the Advisory Council of the Policia training standards have analyzed some eighty skills areas and have grouped them into training courses that cover almost the entire range of police work.
The development of this work on police skills allows training centers for new police, continuing training and high positions to assess rather if their courses include all the skills for which the recipients are formed. This work is still in an initial phase – most skills were not defined until the middle 2000 – and many evaluations of the existing courses have not yet been done. So it remains to be seen the real and complete impact you will have on police formation. There is also a sector that is suspiciously. This critical sector indicates that this is mainly due to the rigid nature of police formation, which has also been criticized by investigation commissions.
Evaluation and selection centers
If traditionally the selection of police officers were made for years of service provided and for internal exams – sympty to the oppositions of the Spanish system – open only to small groups of candidates, now all promotions are made through merit competitions. These contests are open to all agents who believe they have the capacity to exercise a high position and the selection is not done through a traditional exam, but is based on a multifaceted test process, interviews and reports. An integral part of the merit selection process is the evaluation and selection centers, they are processes of evaluation of workers’ capabilities through a series of evidence trying to recreate real situations that candidates will have to face in their new tasks. The tests can be resolution of problems in the form of case studies, simulations of real situations, writing of letters and reports, presentation of presentations, discussions on issues of importance for the police and psychotechnical test. The tests usually last one or two days and normally a team of evaluators trained in these techniques is responsible for the evaluation. The results of the tests subsequently become part of a broader selection process.
Some studies on the use of evaluation and selection centers in the United States show that they are a good way to select high positions. However, they have also been criticized for having too much weight in the selection process and contributing little to the professional development of agents. In response to criticism, the use of centers has evolved. On the one hand, they have less weight in the selection processes and other elements such as interviews, a written report of the candidate on their professional achievements, evidence of having completed external studies, as well as superior reports, have become more importance. On the other, the centers are acquiring a more formative character and is providing more information to the candidates before the evidence to give them the opportunity to prepare better, and also much more information about the results. Although in theory these centers are processes outside the training processes for skillmore suitable. The evidence of the centers are designed to simulate real tasks and, since the training for skills aims to train people for these same tasks, between the final tests of the training and the tests of the centers there is a convergence process.
Conclusions
The police profession in Australia has changed a lot in recent decades, police forces no longer work in an almost military regime, but with the same management and control systems as any other modern organization;More emphasis is made in crime prevention, problem solving and collaboration with citizens, and they have had to respond to increasingly diverse social needs. To respond to these new needs, agents are required that can meet more complex tasks with flexibility and innovation.
The traditional police training did not prepare agents for work in contemporary society, so Australian police forces have carried out a thorough reform of training at all levels. As a consequence, the standard profile of an agent in 2019 is that of a university graduate or graduate.
The long -term impact of this increase in police training levels still to be seen. The expectation is that Australian police forces must be well managed, with a high level of acceptance by citizens, a high degree of integration and understanding with the government and business sectors and, although more importantly, with a good record in theResults of the fight against crime. The training reform cannot guarantee that all this is achieved, but it should undoubtedly be one of the bases in the modernization of the Australian police.
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