Does the training of police recruits in England and Wales meet the needs of professional and ethical practice?

In modern times the system for training police recruits in England and Wales has been changed approximately every five years. In some periods the changes were evolutionary, as in the 1960s and 1970s, when the training was modified to address the challenges of community relations and industrial unrest (Allard 1997). At other times the reform was more ‘revolutionary’, as in the 1980s when, following Lord Scarman’s (1981) report into the inner-city disturbances, the police pedagogic pendulum swung from a ‘paramilitary’ model to a more ‘touchy-feely’ approach, based on the principles of humanistic education and psychology (Heslop 2006).