| Recent high-profile incidents of police misconduct and abuse of power in the U.S. have captured the attention of citizens and government officials. Police ethics training is one possible and partial remedy, and the first opportunity to train police officers on this topic is in the pre-service police academy. However, little is known about the current structure and content of police academy ethics training in the U.S. This project is a comparative study of pre-service police ethics training in police academies across the U.S. The sample consisted of ten states representing every major region of the country. An informational survey was conducted in each state in the sample asking the state directors of law enforcement training to answer questions about the structure and organization of police academy ethics training. Additionally, the instructional materials that the state provided to academy ethics instructors to guide them in teaching ethics to prospective police officers were also collected. These instructional materials were analyzed using thematic analysis for a state to state comparison of the content of police academy ethics training. Building off a prior study by Dillip Das (1986), this project revealed much has remained the same in the content of academy ethics training over the past thirty years. The average amount of time devoted to ethics training in police academies is relatively short compared to total hours of training, and topics closely related to police ethics are not adequately tied into this portion of training, such as constitutional rights, democratic principles of justice, police use of force and biased-based profiling. Additionally, instructors have wide latitude and little guidance in many states in regard to the content of what they are teaching prospective police officers during pre-service police ethics training. The study concludes with recommendations for improving the content and organization of police academy ethics training, particularly in light of the national crisis facing police use of force. |
