Silje Bringsrud Fekjær

Police students’ social background, attitudes and career plans

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the social background of Norwegian and Swedish police students. Are there differences in the students’ social background, and if so, are such differences reflected in different attitudes and career plans among the students? Design/methodology/approach – The questions are explored on the basis of survey data on all Norwegian and Swedish police students who started their education in 2009 (n=737). The methods employed are cross-tabular analysis and multivariate linear regression. Findings – The results show that a larger proportion of Norwegian police students have highly educated parents, compared to the Swedish. However, students’ social background does not seem to be important for their orientation towards theory and knowledge or their plans for doing operational police work. Practical implications – An important question for the futures police educators is whether a study with a formal bachelor status will attract a different type of students. These res...

From legalist to Dirty Harry: Police recruits’ attitudes towards non-legalistic police practice

This study provides a test of the presumption that police recruits with a diverse background, undertaking comparatively long academic training, will refrain from non-legalistic practices. This is tested by longitudinal survey data, covering two cohorts of Swedish police recruits. The results show stable support for the legalistic perspective during academy training. However, during on-the-job training, the recruits become more positive towards non-legalistic practices. This reorientation takes place quite irrespective of the type of duty to which they are assigned. Additionally, neither the recruits’ nor their parents’ level of education seems to matter. There is some effect of age and gender: young male recruits are somewhat more prone to adopt Dirty Harry-inspired measures – that is, achieving essential ends by tarnished means.

Promotion Aspirations among Male and Female Police Students

A long research tradition has documented gender differences in career choices and outcomes in several professions, including the police. However, there is debate about whether such differences reflect initial preferences, socially constructed ideas about the incompatibility of family and working life or the objective constraints that men and women meet in their careers and family lives. This paper explores the initial preferences for career and promotion among male and female police students in Norway. Norwegian female police students are selected rigorously; they have chosen a traditionally male-dominated profession, and they live in a welfare society where the possibilities for combining work and family life are well developed. Under these circumstances, will the initial promotion aspirations of men and women differ? If so, will gender differences persist when family obligations and age are controlled for? These questions were explored using 2009 and 2010 data for first-year police students in Norway (N = 1,079). The results showed that male and female police students have remarkably similar aspirations for promotion, and this remained true when family obligations and age were controlled for. The results indicate that differences in initial preferences do not explain gender differences in career choices and outcomes.

If it works there, will it work here?: The effect of a multi-component responsible beverage service (RBS) programme on violence in Oslo

BACKGROUND The Stockholm Prevents Alcohol and Drug Problems (STAD) programme has been regarded as one of the most successful programmes to date, in reducing alcohol-related violence. This multi-component Responsible Beverage Service (RBS) programme was implemented in Stockholm, Sweden, and has been documented to be extremely effective in reducing alcohol-related nightlife violence. The SALUTT programme in Oslo, Norway was carefully modelled on the STAD project. AIM We investigate whether the results from STAD were replicated in the SALUTT intervention. DESIGN Using geocoded data, the level of violence in the intervention area was compared with different control areas before and after the intervention. STATISTICS Autoregressive moving average models (ARIMA). FINDINGS The SALUTT programme had no statistically significant effect on violence. However, the level of violence in the different potential control areas of Oslo fluctuated without a clear common trend. Hence, it was difficult to establish proper control areas. CONCLUSIONS The results from the Swedish STAD-intervention were not replicated in Oslo. Successful interventions are not necessarily replicated in other contexts, and the current literature does not shed sufficient light on the conditions under which such interventions actually work. Moreover, more attention should be devoted to the identification of adequate control areas in future research.

Norwegian police students’ attitudes towards armament

Whether the police should routinely carry firearms is an ongoing debate in Norway. Although the police can carry weapons under special circumstances and currently are temporarily armed, the normal situation for the police in Norway is to store firearms in sealed cases in their police cars until armament orders are given by the police chief. In this study, we examine attitudes towards routine police armament among Norwegian police students. First, we investigate the distribution of these attitudes among the students, and then we study possible factors influencing their views on the matter. Specifically, we ask how gender, educational background, career plans and perceptions of police work influence their attitudes about armament. Our study is based on survey data from the research project Recruitment, Education and Careers in the Police (RECPOL). Our sample included one cohort of students from the Norwegian Police University College graduating in 2013 (N = 513). Students were divided on the armament question, with roughly one third in favour of armament, one third against and one third undecided. The results of multinomial logistic regression analyses show that men are more likely than women to be in favour of armament, rather than being against. However, the gender difference is largely explained by differences in career plans and perceptions of the police role. Students who foresee a police career in patrol work and have an autonomous, non-legalistic perception of the police role are more likely to prefer armament.