ABSTRACT
The socio-demographic background of police students is a central question when discussing the position of the police force within an increasingly diverse society. The issue of representative bureaucracy is highly relevant for this discussion, especially in relation to the possible positive benefits of diversity. Therefore, the socio-demographic background of police students will be compared first to the national population within the individual countries using Eurostat data, and second, between the different countries in the RECPOL project. This will address the question of diversity in the recruitment process and of how differences in national police education may attract different police students. At the same time, there is a push for increasing the reflective and analytical aspects of police work – also described as the academisation of police work – which may or may not be aligned with a discussion of diversity. In this chapter, the discussion of academisation is addressed by analysing the police students’ orientation towards inclusion of scientific methods into police work. This gives another insight into who the different police educations attract. In addition, the various admission criteria in the different countries allow for a discussion of whether or not admission criteria will be beneficial for the process of academisation.
