Search

This article presents a map and summary of the landscape of a systematic search of the police recruit training literature. Following the process of searching, screening, and coding both published and grey literature, a total of 109 studies met our inclusion criteria. Thematic analysis of the 109 studies led to the emergence of six broad themes and associated subthemes. The two most prevalent themes focused on ‘examining academic and/or field training’ and ‘examining a specific aspect of the training programme’, each containing 36 studies. Most of the studies were based in the USA, (n = 67). Grey literature such as dissertations, theses, and reports made up nearly half of all included studies (n = 51) and published journal articles made up the bulk of the remaining studies (n = 50). Furthermore, 56 studies (50%) used a quantitative design, 36 studies (33%) adopted mixed methods, and 19 studies (17%) employed a qualitative approach. The 109 studies were double-blind quality appraised using recognized quality appraisal tools and revealed a wide variation in the nature and quality of studies. Overall, the strength of the evidence was fragile; only 13 studies (12%) were of a ‘strong’ quality, 55 studies (50%) were ‘weak’, and the rest (41, i.e. 38%) were of ‘moderate’ quality. The article concludes with recommendations for guiding future research in police recruit training.

Since December 2008, police forces in the UK have published crime statistics using an online crime mapping tool (www.police.uk). The drivers behind this were to help improve the credibility and confidence that the public had in police-reported crime levels, address perceptions of crime, promote community engagement and empowerment, and support greater public service transparency and accountability. This article captures the policy rationale behind this initiative, and draws together the research evidence on its impact. We argue that many of the original objectives relating to improving engagement and empowerment have yet to be realized, poor cartographic discipline has led to misinterpretation and confusion, and that the initiative instead has primarily become a tool for promoting political transparency. We suggest that future focus should be on improving the quality and cartographic visualization of the published information alongside the integration of social media functionality to enrich local dialog on crime issues.