Recruits lack life experience and don't want to work nights, police chief says
19 May 2021, 15:33 | Updated: 19 May 2021, 15:41
Many graduates entering the police have "no life experience" and didn't realise they needed to work nights and weekends, Northamptonshire's chief constable has complained.
Nick Adderley has warned that plans from the College of Policing to only allow recruits to enter the police through a degree programme risks an influx of recruits "sadly lacking" in the necessary life experience.
Many graduates coming through the current programmes are "very, very young" and often "a bit taken aback by the role", Mr Adderley told the Police Oracle.
"These people a lot of them have no life experience. And it's very difficult to try and give them an injection of that realisim in the timeframe we have for training."
The police chief added: "When I speak to all the cohorts that come in, I tell them quite clearly, this is not an extension of university. This is not an extension of Sixth Form college. This is really serious business."
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Some graduates are shocked by the level of violence during self-defence training, while others have been heard commenting that they didn't realise they needed to work nights and weekends, the Police Oracle reports.
The plans to narrow entries into the police to only those coming through degree programmes risks "a perfect storm", Mr Adderley continued.
"We've got a very young workforce who think they're invisible as in 'it can't possibly happen to me'... And we've got a society which is becoming more violence, with a prevelance to use violence against police officers, so more are likely to be injured," he warned.
The police chief said he will be writing to the College of Policing to argue against the plans to narrow entry to degree programmes only.
