Training, Time and Technical Ability to Allow Breathing Space for Evidence-Based Policing

Throughout the chapter the concept of learning has been a common thread—as a sister piece to the survey documented earlier, we also sought to assess how much academic evidence the major MPS training providers used in the design, set-up, running and generation of feedback of the training they provide. We would suggest that there is a huge gulf between what policing as a profession has come to understand ‘training’ is for the craft of policing and what academics expect in terms of learning ‘what works’ and how to document systematically the impact of a tactic or approach. Our work in the Met showed us that the traditional approach to ‘training’ left training to the realm of moulding craft experience. We explored this by working with the Met’s training providers and each completed a self-assessment. The self-assessments showed three main challenges.