Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles

By The Police Executive Research Forum

  The United States has traditionally trained police officers on the cheap. The survey PERF conducted for this project (see page 10) found that more than 71% of agencies devote less than 5% of their total budget to recruit training. And while nearly half of the agencies responding to the survey said that spending on recruit training had increased over the past five years, that was before police budgets faced the dual challenges of cuts related to the COVID-19 pandemic and calls to “defund” the police. Investments in training could be stalled or reduced at the very time they need to be increased to bring about needed changes in American policing. In many jurisdictions, the goal seems to be moving as many recruits as possible through academy training as fast as possible and at the lowest possible cost. This approach has been driven, in part, by the desire to get more officers on the street, quickly – a challenge that became particularly acute as officer hirings declined and retirements and resignations increased because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as homicides and other violent crimes surged  But there can be serious consequences – legal, financial, and reputational – for agencies that fail to adequately invest in training for their recruit and veteran officers. In the United States, the Courts have consistently held that municipalities can be held liable for failing to adequately train police officers under Section 1983 of the U.S. Code.8 While these claims can be difficult for plaintiffs to prove and the total cost of failure-to-train judgments is hard to ascertain, police agencies that fail to invest in training run the risk of losing the trust and support of the community when they are sued. Compared with other countries and other often demanding professions, the duration of police recruit training in the United States is limited, especially given the levels of crime and disorder that today’s police officers are expected to address, and the challenges of policing during an opioid addiction crisis, an underfunded behavioral health system, a protracted pandemic, and a largely unchecked firearms market. In 37 states, recruits are permitted to begin working as police officers even before they have completed their basic training course. Furthermore, recruit training is not necessarily aligned with research on what works, although the research in this area is limited. As the Council on Criminal Justice Task Force on Policing recently pointed out, “Despite the critical importance of police officer training to the onboarding of new recruits, there is very little evidence about its effectiveness. The scant research that does exist is not promising.”  So not only does the policing profession need to invest in training itself; it also needs to invest in rigorous research about what works and what doesn’t in police recruit training. For example, there should be research not just on what topics need to be covered, but also on the best sequence for delivering those courses.   The current state of recruit training demands that we rethink – and remake – the system for how new police officers are trained. We need national consensus and national standards on what the training contains, how it is delivered, and by whom. This report may present a grim picture of the current state of recruit training, but it also puts forth a series of principles that can help guide the transformation of training to meet the challenges of policing for today and tomorrow.

Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2022. 84p.