By Kirsteen Grant, Britta Heidl,  Christof Backhaus,  Diane Vincent,

This research compares the ‘work’ and ‘workplace’ expectations of probationers (new recruits) and early career officers (with up to two years of experience) with the lived experiences of established police officers (with three or more years of experience). It examines the extent to which the expectations of early career officers are realistic, understood, and are being fulfilled for established officers. The wellbeing and retention of police officers are of key concern to Police Scotland. Providing an in-depth examination of the reasons behind turnover intention (desire to leave) and, importantly, the retention factors that might encourage officers to remain within Police Scotland is the driving force behind this research. The research is broadly structured around four antecedents, or themes: police culture and work environment; management and leadership; training and career progression; and wellbeing and work-life balance. Drawing on psychological contract theory as an analytical lens, it focuses on the implications and consequences for officers’ job satisfaction, engagement, and turnover intention (i.e., retention factors). All empirical data were collected within Police Scotland. The methodology consisted of a sequential mixed methods approach, with qualitative data firstly generated from 32 interviews (15 probationers and 17 established officers), followed by a quantitative survey of 1,297 police officers. By comparing new and early career officers’ expectations with the lived experiences of established officers, this report shines a light on several areas of dissonance that Police Scotland should be cognisant of. Probationers’ hopes for the job were geared around having a challenging, rewarding, and varied role in which they can ‘make a difference’, where they are treated inclusively and with respect, and where they have opportunities to develop, grow and progress. Yet, on average, established officers reflected that their job has not fully measured up to the job they envisaged, and a substantial share of respondents (45%) indicated that with hindsight they would not choose to become a police officer again. Where the eventual job does not match up to high initial expectations, current probationers and early career officers are at greater risk of voluntary turnover. The report aims to inform future Human Resource policy and practices to shape the work and workplace expectations and lived experiences of police officers. Police Scotland should take account of the changing needs and work and workplace expectations of a new generation of police officers when developing the next iteration of its People Strategy, including its approach to strategic organisational and culture development. The report makes seven specific recommendations to Police Scotland.

Edinburgh: Copyright © 2024 Scottish Institute for Policing Research, 2024. 52p.

By Barbara A. Fedders

Police officers have become permanent fixtures in public schools. The sharp increase in the number of school police officers over the last twenty years has generated a substantial body of critical legal scholarship. Critics question whether police make students safer. They argue that any safety benefits must be weighed against the significant role the police play in perpetuating a school-to-prison pipeline that funnels Black and Brown students and students with disabilities out of schools and into courts, jails, and prisons. In suggesting remedies for this problem, commentators have proposed several regulatory fixes. These include changes to the standards for evaluating students’ claims of constitutional rights violations, specialized police trainings, and voluntary agreements between law enforcement agencies and school districts that circumscribe the role of school police. Thus far, however, legal scholars have focused primarily on the “how” of school policing, eschewing the logically prior normative question of whether there should be police in schools at all. This Article takes up that question, and it argues that education policymakers should consider removal—rather than only regulation— of school police. In so doing, it makes three primary contributions to school-policing scholarship. First, it shifts the focus away from the safety debates that preoccupy scholars and policymakers, arguing that financial incentives for schools, security-theater concerns for administrators, and legitimacy-building interests of law enforcement equally explain school policing’s rise. Second, using critiques of community policing as an analytical framework, it illuminates a range of school-governance and pedagogical harms from school policing that exist separate from and antecedent to policing’s role in fueling the school-to-prison pipeline. Third, it puts grassroots movements against school policing in conversation with the prison abolitionist project and argues that insights from both should inform school-safety policymaking.

CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 109:1443, 2021.  

By the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia (ACLU-D.C.) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU National),  

This report, produced by the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia (ACLU-D.C.) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU National), follows two previous reports that analyzed data on stops and frisks conducted by the Washington, D.C. (the District, D.C.) Metropolitan Police Department (MPD, the Department). MPD is required to collect data on all stops conducted by its officers pursuant to the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Act.1 Although the NEAR Act does not require MPD to publish its stops data, MPD leadership made a public commitment to releasing the data on a semi-annual basis. 2 The data serves as a critical tool that provides the public with opportunities to engage in police accountability efforts. The data enables the public to examine the outcomes and potential impact of the practices of D.C. police officers. This report seeks to assist community members, advocates, members of the D.C. Council, the Mayor, and other stakeholders in exercising oversight and furthering the MPD’s accountability. This report covers data collected between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2023. The data analyzed in this report indicates that the stark racial disparities present in the 2019 and 2020 stops data remain. MPD continues to disproportionately stop Black people in D.C. Key Findings 1. Black people are being stopped at disproportionate rates in relation to their demographic representation in the District. Although Black people comprised just over 44% of the District’s population in 2022 and 2023, they comprised 71.4% of the people stopped in 2022 and 70.6% of the people stopped in 2023. 2. MPD’s data indicate that the stop-and-frisk tactic is not particularly effective at removing guns from the streets. The rate at which guns are seized is not significant enough to justify the overwhelming number of stops being conducted. a. In 2022, there were 68,244 stops. Of these, only 0.9% resulted in the seizure of a gun. b. In 2023, there were 68,561 stops. Of these, only 1.2% resulted in the seizure of a gun. The significant disproportionality across racial groups raises concerns about biased policing by MPD. Research on disproportionality and racial bias in other jurisdictions has concluded that racial disparities in stops and searches cannot be explained by crime or other non-race factors. Here, too, we advance the position that these disparities in MPD’s stop-and-frisk practices are consistent with racial bias. Stop-and-frisk practices can be harmful to individuals and communities. There are both short- and long-term implications for people who are stopped and searched by the police—from health-related issues, such as significant psychological distress, to social implications, such as negative impacts with regard to educational and employment opportunities. Communities or groups of people who experience racially biased policing practices are additionally impacted. These communities and groups develop distrust of the police. For Black communities, the Department of Justice has noted that the “experience of disproportionately being subjected to stops and arrests in violation of the Fourth Amendment shapes black residents’ interactions with the [police], to the detriment of community trust,” and “makes the job of delivering police services … more dangerous and less effective.” 

Washington DC: ACLU of The District of Columbia, 2024. 19p.