European police recruits’ views on ideal personal characteristics of a police officer

Abstract

As societies are becoming more heterogeneous and complex, the role of the police is becoming more demanding. To fulfil this role, police officers need several widely recognised skills and personal qualities, but less is known about how they are valued by police recruits. Thus, we have examined views of police recruits in six European countries on three competencies or characteristics of known importance for police work: knowledge, leadership, and the ability to form good relations with citizens. We have also explored variations in views of recruits in different organisations and changes in their views during their training. For these purposes, we used survey data collected in the RECPOL project. Since the data were collected from different populations and at different times, the analysis is based on measurement invariance methodology, and one of the aims was to highlight the importance of rigorous appraisal of the quality and comparability of similar survey data using such methods. The results reveal both differences and similarities in views of recruits in the surveyed countries and changes during training. Police culture appears to be a significant factor, as more items in the applied instrument could be validly used in comparisons of recruits in organisations with similar police traditions. The results also showed interesting contrasts, e.g. new recruits in Sweden rated good relations with citizens more highly than recruits in organisations with a more military history, but this pattern changed during training, presumably due to influences of the recruitment process, training and culture within the organisations.

Good and Bad Cops – How Do American and Swedish Police Officers Perceive Policing?

“…The findings in this article confirm some of the existing scholarship that examines officers' perceptions of the quality of policing (Inzunza & Wikström, 2019;Storms et al, 1990) by highlighting the importance of characteristics such as responsiveness, activeness, flexibility and considerateness. The findings, on the other hand, do not confirm the previous findings that emphasize masculinity and strength.…”

“…Another quantitative study conducted on perceptions of European police students found that the interaction between citizens and officers is one of the most important factors in assessing the quality of police officers. More specifically, police students from Sweden and Norway highlighted the importance of good relationships with citizens compared to police students in other countries (Inzunza & Wikström, 2019).…”

“…However, during the last two decades, attention has been focused on understanding the efficiency of policing better (Torres, 2017;Zahnow et al, 2017) as well as police legitimacy (Lee et al, 2015;Peyton et al, 2019;Tankebe, 2013) in various cultural, social and geographic contexts. While attention has generally focused on understanding the public's perception of policing, only a few scholars have explored officers' perceptions of good and bad policing (Inzunza & Wikström, 2019;Muir, 1979;Storms et al, 1990). Thus, although the already extensive body of policing literature provides a robust discussion about the various aspects that impact how officers behave and how to assess the quality and efficiency of the policing strategies that are practised, it also exposes a knowledge gap.…”

A magyar rendőrhallgatók pályaválasztásának motivációja és attitűdjei a rendészeti modellek tükrében

“…The aim of the Hungarian longitudinal survey of the international RECPOL (Recruitment, Education and Careers in the Police) research presented in this study is to reveal the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of students entering the training programme about their chosen career and to monitor the impact of training on students' personality, values and career orientation (Bjørgo & Damen, 2020;Inzunza & Wikström, 2020;Bäck, Vallès & Padyab, 2017;Bäck, 2020).…”

Implementation of Proactive Recruitment Program for Indonesia National Police (POLRI) Candidates at Regional Police of the Riau Islands

“…In contrast, the proactive model helps find prospective professionals with the intrinsic motivation and purpose required by the organization (Leahy, Pepper, & Light, 2021). A study further emphasised that public services such as the police need people who are proactively recruited, given the increasingly complex task of the police (Inzunza & Wilkstrom, 2019).…”