ABSTRACT
In addition to my core work in teaching and research at the University of Vienna, as a sociologist concerned with police issues I was also involved in the education and training of police officers in Austria. As such, I lectured at advanced training seminars for department, district, and station commanders of the Gendarmerie (the law enforcement body in rural areas at the time) in Lower Austria. The training seminars, which were held three times a year with 15 participants each, were compulsory for these officers. Each time I spoke at these seminars, the topic of the lecture was “The Tasks of the Police Officer in Modern Society, Conflict Situations from the Sociologist’s Perspective and Proposed Solutions.” All in all, I presented and discussed this topic on approximately 30 occasions for three hours at a time, as my involvement in the training seminars lasted from 1991 to 2000, spanning a period of 10 years. For twice as long (i.e., for 20 years between 1983 and 2002), I worked as a lecturer at the Education Centre of the Gendarmerie (Gendarmeriezentralschule), later the “Security Academy” (Sicherheitsakademie, SIAK), first in Mödling, then in Traiskirchen (both of which are in Lower Austria). In my work there, I taught sociology in the basic training courses for commissioned officers (leitende Beamte, employment group W1, later E1) in the three law enforcement bodies in Austria at the time-the Gendarmerie previously mentioned, the Security Guards
Introduction ........................................................................................................ 159 Teaching Objectives and Program of Study .....................................................161 The Status of Sociology in the Curriculum ......................................................162 The Reality of Teaching...................................................................................... 164
The Present State of Teaching Sociology to Police Officers in Austria .........168 References ............................................................................................................ 170
(the uniformed police working in the cities), and the Criminal Investigation Corps.* The basic training courses for these commissioned officers were only open to those who had qualified for entrance to “university”; however, they were also later open to noncommissioned officers (dienstführende Beamte, employment group W2, later E2a) without such qualifications. Candidates had to pass an entrance examination and a screening test for psychological prerequisites in order to be admitted to the courses.
