Should police training be conducted pre-join? An exploratory comparison with allied healthcare professions

Abstract Internationally, policing is perhaps the only vocation projecting professionalism, but within which higher education is widely regarded as unnecessary. This paper makes a case that it could instead emulate similar professions, specifically within healthcare, in requiring recruits to receive their education prior to application. This may then help alleviate some negative policing cultures through exposure to diverse viewpoints and gaining ‘life experience’ within higher education settings. It demonstrates how this in turn can lead to better policing by a plethora of quantitative metrics. Utilizing the authors’ personal knowledge across such disciplines, and comparisons with how the British healthcare system recruits across a full spectrum of roles, it suggests these as a basis for police recruitment in the UK and wider. It concludes that the current post-join approach is outdated and contributes to adverse policing cultures and indoctrination of new recruits. A pre-join entry approach would instead bring multiple, measurable benefits.