Attempts to teach ethics to police leaders and managers at the Police College: a lesson from history

ABSTRACT

This practitioner and experience-based insider account outlines the reasons for the introduction in the late 1970s of a named ‘ethics package’ to the content of courses of study at the Police College, Bramshill. The context of the College, and the modal characteristics of its client groups of middle and senior ranking police officers are highlighted. In 1978 an ‘ethics package’ began to be constructed in order to make a significant contribution to the ‘professional’ knowledge and practices commensurate with the role-requirements of police leadership. An outline of the intellectual basis guiding and informing the content of the ‘ethics package’ is provided. The paper then identifies some of the persistent and often disappointing responses to the continuing attempts to include something called ‘ethics’ on the various programmes of study at Bramshill. From 1992 onwards ‘ethics’ was to make various appearances on the leadership and management courses but its status was always fragile partly because of the various regime changes that befell the institution. In 1994 a formal educational action-research process, was begun which sought to position ‘ethics’ on the ‘Police Management Programme’ such that the subject would not be set aside. However, after six years of commitment and endeavour, the feedback from course participants never achieved the level of positive response needed to achieve the fundamental aim of the research project. The paper concludes with a very brief summary of some of the reasons why presenting something called ‘ethics’ to experienced police officers was – and perhaps remains – intrinsically difficult.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• Police College
• culture
• police education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Police Management Programme consisted of four separate modules each linked to the MCI framework comprising ‘Managing operations’, ‘Managing people’, ‘Managing information’ and ‘Managing finance’. In truth, the modules presented at Bramshill did not cohere or relate to each other and certainly could not guarantee that all course participants had internalised and practiced the elements of competence in such a way as to qualify as ‘competent’ managers. The process of designing and delivering the programme was dysfunctional and riddled with conflict – not least because the staff were not really interested in the alienating processes of ‘managerialism’, in measurable outcomes and the rigidities of a competence (or competency) framework (see: Adlam 1999).

2 I chose not to document or record the wide range of both sometimes very general and sometimes very specific issues, i.e. the various ethical dilemmas, surfaced during ‘the play’s the thing’. I did not wish officers participating on the ethics unit to feel under any form of surveillance.

3 Bramshill’s symbolism as patriarchal, exclusive and elitist – along with is trappings of colonialist ideology (it was still being referred to as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of police training even as the millennium approached) increasingly rendered it anachronistic and fundamentally misaligned with wider social and cultural trends – especially the advances in feminism, equal opportunities and post-colonial theory. Its deep association with an oppressive and highly discriminatory past meant that it could no longer possibly survive as a centre for police training and development within the context of a society striving towards inclusivity and respect for all persons.