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4 Crim. Just. Rev. 101 (1979)
Book Review - Essay

handle is hein.journals/crmrev4 and id is 111 raw text is: Criminal Justice Review The Quality of Police Education By Lawrence W Sherman, Warren Bennis, Tom Bradley, Lee Brown, Hugo Masini ,Stephen May, Norval Morris, Patrick Murphy, Robert O'Neil and Charles Saunders, Pp. 278. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1978. In November of 1978, the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police Officers released its report. However, no one expected The Quality of Police Education to be received in the same manner as the President's Commission, Task Force Report: The Police over a decade ago. The 1967 President's Commission report changed society's perception of the police and their education. Traditionally, the police organization's internal emphasis for improving their organizations and personnel has been directed toward training, not education. Now, a surprising external consensus has been reported to have emerged. Police education has been, in essential respects a failure. Subsequently, the National Advisory Commission has suggested that the future direction of higher education for the police is in question and requires new direction. The commission's report represented an overview of police education in the United States. It outlined how police education has been inadequate for coping with problems in policing; but not why the education was deficient. The commission identified the key issues in police education as: 1) which subjects were necessary for police careers, 2) who should teach those subjects, 3) who should study them, 4) how colleges should use police education programs and 5) how police personnel policies should maximize future benefits of those programs. The text, The Quality of Police Education, presented the findings of the commission's inquiry into police education programs in the United States. The inquiry included programs in the three types of academic institutions: community colleges, colleges and universities. The commission focused on how police education must change if it was to help the police establish the desired law enforcement techniques, organizational structures and achieve the level of effectiveness necessary for successfully coping with crime and providing other public services. The commission examined the role of police education in overcoming fundamental police problems and evaluated three primary goals of police education: 1) teaching specific skills required for competent performance of routine police tasks, 2) providing multidisciplinary education and 3) educating students to become change agents capable of improving police services and achieving professional status. The quality of police education was assessed by evalution of the curriculum content and its impact on the students of four categories of police education programs: 1) general studies with the major academic concentration in any of the liberal arts, 2) criminal justice as a liberal arts major, 3) criminal justice as a professional major and 4) police technology. Program administration, faculty qualification and differences in student populations were identified within the varying purposes of police education. The commission advocated that education may be utilized as a resource for improving police services and for providing opportunities to create new activities, programs and organizational objectives. The commission emphasized that the current trend exhibited by the police profession toward educating the in service officers, rather thari recruiting educated individuals, has seriously undermined the potential of police education. The commission's recommendations for changing police education were to: 1) redirect federal funding toward programs with expanded curriculums and qualified faculty, rather than to police

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