The Educational Background of the Police
| Date | 01 October 1982 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8205500403 |
| Author | Kenneth A. L. Parker |
| Published date | 01 October 1982 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
KENNETH A. L.
PARKER,
C.B.
Receiver
for
the Metropolitan Police District 1967-1974
THE
EDUCATIONAL
BACKGROUND
OF THE POLICE
Despite the great amount of public attentiongiven to police affairs in
recent months little has been said
about
the rapidly changing
composition of the service.
It
is a strikingfact that whereas the Royal
Commission on the Police of 1962 expressed its concern at being
unable to find a recent instance of a graduate recruit entering the
service, the latest figures show that at the end of 1981, 2,610 officers
serving in police forces in England and Wales (including 295 women)
had degrees, 521 having entered the service in 1981. The rapid
increase in recent years is no
doubt
due partly to the improvements in
police pay since the Edmund-Davies recommendations were
accepted in 1978and the much greater difficulty in finding otherjobs,
but there is much more to it than that. The change that has taken
place in the encouragement given to the officer of high quality since
the Royal Commission reported has made the service much more
attractive than before to the better educated young man and woman.
The question of the standards of education in the police service has
been a matter of controversy almost from the beginnings of the
modern service. When Sir Richard Mayne died in 1868,after nearly
40 years as Commissioner, at first jointly and then for the last 14
years on his own, The Times described him as having been
"continuously in the field on active service, day and night, against a
ubiquitous and restless foe" (the criminal) with "only two educated
lieutenants".' Criticisms of what was usually called the
lack
of
"educated control" in the Metropolitan Police were renewed from
time to time, and a few additional posts were authorized at levels
above superintendent (there were no chief superintendents). But
when Lord Trenchard became Commissioner in
1931
he was
determined to improve the quality of the supervisory ranks of the
force and he decided, with the approval of the Government of the
day, to reorganize the officer structure of the force broadly on the
principles with which he was familiar in the armed services. There
was to be an officer class, and all posts above inspector were
eventually to be filled by
the
specially selected graduates of the new
Hendon College, who would be given the rank of
junior
station
inspector. (The majority of the students were recruited from serving
members of the force,
but
this was not intended to affect the basic
concept). When Sir Philip Game took over as Trenchard's successor
he did not agree with his predecessor's views
about
the need for direct
entry,
but
it was only the outbreak of war that caused the closure of
the college, after only five years activity which, despite the antipathy
320 October /982
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