In Pursuit of Police Professionalism: The Development and Assessment of a Conceptual Model of Professionalism in Law Enforcement

摘要

Adherence to the highest standards and fundamentals of professionalism is essential to the profession of law enforcement. Police professionalism has many meanings but no definitive model of professionalism in policing has been established. Historically, the idea of policing as a profession has emerged slowly. The professional model, as proposed in this research, seeks to define a working model of professionalism in policing. It is proposed that police work is a "true profession," similar to the professions of medicine, law, and education. Advocates of any professional model of policing argue that police officers are experts through training, certification, education, and experience, and thus should be viewed as professionals in every sense of the term. In selecting the criteria for this developmental model of professionalism, a content analysis of the literature was conducted in order to define key elements of professionalism and professionalism in policing. The development of this descriptive profile resulted in the conceptualization of a professional model utilizing nine criteria, or attributes: high standards of recruitment and selection (civil service), formal education (college) requirements, formal training (police academy) and state certification, state-mandated (annual) specialized training and re-certification, sworn police officers empowered to arrest, armed police officers (firearms), formal policies (departmental) for operations and function, community policing (commitment and service), and accreditation. Select specialists (N=25) in the field of criminal justice - law enforcement practitioners and higher education faculty - were sampled to assess the proposed model. The focus of this study was that professionalism in policing could be defined and achieved by meeting the established criteria as proposed by the Professional Model of Policing. The results indicate the majority of the specialists in this study felt the proposed model was acceptable, and could serve as a basic blueprint of professionalism in law enforcement, or "ideal type", pending further relevant research on police professionalism.