Between the Policing Pledge and Police Practice: how victim theories can improve the treatment of victims by the police

This paper owes its origins to the formation of an innovative and ground breaking foundation degree in police studies which was established at the University of Huddersfield in early 2005 and was run in conjunction with West Yorkshire Police Service. {2]

This course was one of the first of its kind in the U.K. and was, in its way, the culmination of a significant review of police training which began in 1999 with a HMIC report in the way police constables were trained. It was the first major review since the Second World War and made several recommendations which were also developed in the review of 2002 Training Matters. Between them these reviews had acknowledged that although the existing Probationer Constable Training Programme{ P.T.P} had certain strengths, a new model needed to be implemented which would, inter alia, embed the values of life-long learning, the need for police training to be ‘outward’ looking i.e. away from the physical and cultural confines of police training schools and increase the professionalization of the police service. It was in effect , a training programme designed to meet the more complex demands of modern policing by introducing an educational element to training.