Learning to be a police officer. Tradition and change in the training and professional lives of police officers

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the usefulness of a model for empirical studies of conservative and innovative forces in police training and the professional lives of police officers. The model is based on frame factor theory and is demonstrated against Swedish police research and the authors’ own observations and experiences of the Swedish police organization and police training. The authors conclude that the model can be used to describe and understand the everyday practice that police students and new police officers encounter and adopt. In particular, the model can help to identify and describe the tension fields that individual police students and police officers must learn to navigate. Thus, empirical studies using the model may contribute to a deeper understanding of police officers’ individual and collective attitudes to the conservation and the development of day‐to‐day practice in police training and the police profession.