Police officers with appropriate training can support school delivery of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) lessons on drugs and the law in a way that increases trust in police fairness and helps students learn thesession’s content, according to a new report from released by LSE's Department of Methodology.
The report was based on data collected from more than 7,000 pupils from 81 schools across England. It found that classes led by police officers who received some teacher training, helped increase confidence in the police amongst young people being taught. By contrast, sessions led by police trained in delivering PSHE were shown to be more effective than sessions led by teachers alone and had a positive impact on the perception of the police.
Examples of the areas of students’ engagement measured for the study include procedural justice, police legitimacy, and knowledge about drugs. After being taught by police, students were more likely to correctly identify what criminal justice phrases such as ‘intent to supply’ meant (91%), compared to students who did not have an intervention (74%).
Moreover, students’ perception of police procedural fairness (their expectation that officers will treat them with respect, explain their actions, and allow them voice during future encounters) significantly increased, which remained the case up to ten weeks (on average) after the lessons had taken place.
Notably, the lessons -- which were conducted between September 2019 and March 2020 on 13-15-year-old students - had a similar effect on students, regardless of gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, or previous police-related experiences. This implies that similar lessons are likely to have a positive impact even for students who have more fraught relationship with the police.
Overall, police officers “were more likely to be perceived to treat students with respect, give students the opportunity to speak their minds… and treat everyone fairly,” after being taught by police compared to teachers. These effects were relatively long-lasting. Police officers engaging with schools in this way may thus help foster the type of positive experiences that generate a mutual sense of trust and legitimacy.
The report’s authors, Department of Methodology Visiting Fellow Dr Krisztián Pósch and LSE Department of Methodology Professor Jonathan Jackson, identified a number of reasons why the police-led lessons might have been more successful:
- Police officers volunteered to teach students, which was likely to increase their enthusiasm for the role.
- Police received well-designed training.
- Lesson plans conveyed messages of procedural justice and respect for boundaries.
- Lessons were embedded in the PSHE curriculum.
- Police-student encounters took place on the students’ ‘turf’.
“Rather than young people largely having interactions with police officers out in the street, where the officers are acting in a regulatory capacity, they would therefore have more humanised interactions in their early teenage years that can help foster a sense of trust between police and young people,” the authors conclude.
Professor Jonathan Jackson said: “This first-of-its-kind trial found robust and long-lasting effects on young people’s attitudes. Interactions with police officers are teachable moments, where individuals learn about the nature of society and its institutions, as well as their role and position within society.
“Because ‘good contact’ helps to engender trust and legitimacy, and ‘bad contact’ helps to damage people’s relationship with the law, it is important to get these encounters right. Police officers engaging with education in schools may help engineer the type of positive experiences that foster a sense of trust and legitimacy, particularly because they are on young people’s own turf.”
Dr Krisztián Pósch said: “We are certainly not recommending that police officers go into schools in an enforcement, surveillance or protective capacity. Instead, we encourage the police to provide educational training to volunteering police officers and collaborate with schools to deliver lessons where they have expertise.
“Although this study provided strong evidence regarding the effectiveness of the programme, more research is needed. Among others, we are yet to understand how many times a police officer should visit a school for maximum impact; which other topics could be used to deliver similar experiences; the ideal age of pupils to be visited; and whether the results are generalisable to all pupils in England.
“Finally, although we could demonstrate a moderately strong increase in positive attitudes and a strong learning experience, we need further data on the extent to which these changes in opinions trigger changes in behaviours.”