Summary
"The thesis explores the role of academic education in police professionalisation. ... Literature from police studies and sociology of professions provides the conceptual and theoretical framework for the empirical data of 24 semi-structured interviews conducted with 14 police national training coordinators and local police trainers. The increasing academisation of police training and the formalisation of the police-academia relationships suggest police professionalisation has reached a tipping point. This is seen in the current investigative skills training in England and Wales, which is characterised by growing centralisation, standardisation, and emphasis on formalising the professional knowledge base of investigations and policing – a trend which the Professionalising Investigation Programme exemplifies. While the police (including the investigative specialism) can be shown to display many of the qualities of professions, it has lacked the level of instructional abstraction characterising other professions, typically provided by higher education and, crucially, leading to externally recognised qualifications."--Abstract.