Abstract
This chapter aims to shed some light on the recent state of training and education for police and other law enforcement officers in Europe by sharing a set of empirical data that was collected in a small project established by CEPOL – by then called the European Police College – covering the period 2013–2014. The project was set up for upgrading the findings of earlier surveys (CEPOL 2006; Ferreira et al. 2010), which intended to capture the structures and trends of law enforcement training and education in the European Union.
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Notes
- 1.
The European Police College began as an institutional entity born and financed by the network of national police colleges and academies and converted into an agency of the European Union in 2005. In 2016, the mandate of the agency was expanded to also include border guards, customs officers, prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel and the official name changed to European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) (see Regulation (EU) 2015/2219 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015).
- 2.
All responsibility for statements and conclusions presented in this chapter is solely those of the authors. The content of this chapter does neither imply nor reflect endorsement by CEPOL, and shall not be taken in any way as the official position of the agency.
- 3.
Current and exact figures for police officers on the national levels are hard to come by – the figures provided by Eurostat shall be considered as the best available approximation in this regard – see “Personnel in the criminal justice system” (crim_just_job) at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/crime/database.
- 4.
Appointed members of the ELEES Working Group were André Konze (Germany, chairperson), Gabor Kovacs (Hungary), Joao Cabaco (Portugal) and Renato Raggi (Italy). The group’s work was supported by Detlef Nogala (CEPOL).
- 5.
Apart from the police, “law enforcement“ would also include customs, border guard or judicial authorities having an investigation mandate.
- 6.
For more information on the AEPC, go to www.aepc.net.
- 7.
- 8.
Due to its federal multi-agency set-up, Germany appointed 15 responders.
- 9.
Actually, a follow-up of Q2 was sent out to collect the titles of relevant courses and programmes in order to prepare the principal third stage of the survey.
- 10.
The response rate for questionnaire 1 across all countries and organisations was 85%. For those countries indicating positively such institutions in question in Q1, the response rate in regard to Q2 was 83%. In the case of Q3, the final online questionnaire sent, requesting detailed information on concrete programmes and courses, the response rate halved (41%).
- 11.
CEPOL and Frontex launched their accredited master programmes only in 2015.
- 12.
The ELEES questionnaires did not request reasons for certain developments in the member states or associated countries. It might make sense to give room for such explanations in future surveys.
- 13.
Within that group of 36, there are further differentiations like being a university of applied sciences. Such distinctions have not been further examined or evaluated. It was assumed that these variations are caused by national, historical or cultural reasons.
- 14.
The German Police Academy, for example, became the German Police University simultaneously with the accreditation of its Master’s course.
- 15.
The fact that the same number of institutions claims university status is a coincidence. There is an overlap, but there is no dependency between both variables.
- 16.
The state police of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany with almost 45,000 sworn officers accounts for the biggest group of Bologna-students in the ELEES survey.
- 17.
The typical auditor question, if the quality of Bologna-accredited programmes/course justifies the higher costs and efforts, must be answered by the respective institution.
- 18.
A concrete example: The University of Applied Sciences of North Rhine Westphalia, for example, mainly used Ilias© just for administrative issues and for the distribution of material to the students. It might be worth to observe that development and ask more detailed questions in further CEPOL surveys. This also concerns such institutions, which do not use e-learning programmes at all.
- 19.
Unfortunately, we received no specific information about those programmes in the third step of the survey.
- 20.
However, there is no information available that supports the thesis that there might be a difference in the accreditation quality between internal and external bodies.
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Konze, A., Nogala, D. (2018). Higher Police Education in Europe: Surveying Recent Developments. In: Rogers, C., Frevel, B. (eds) Higher Education and Police. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58386-0_8
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