New public and personal safety training equips officers to de-escalate conflict without using force
New public and personal safety training introduced
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Our new national curriculum for safety training was a commitment made in the officer and staff safety review (2020). We released new conflict management guidance highlighting that police officers and staff should have the skills to de-escalate conflict, where appropriate, without using force.
The scenario-based public and personal safety training uses realistic situations that officers are likely to deal with on a daily basis such as:
- stop and search
- dealing with a vulnerable person
- working in custody
Pilot
The results of a year-long pilot in Avon and Somerset, show a 9% reduction in the use of force by officers who took part in the new training. The pilot highlights that Avon and Somerset alone would have recorded around 1,200 fewer use-of-force incidents over a full 12 months (an 11% reduction).
If the training has the same impact across the country, there could be tens of thousands fewer conflict situations successfully managed without officers needing to use force.
Evaluation
Our evaluation shows the training is equipping officers to deal more effectively with the challenges they face. While there is a greater focus on communication and de-escalation techniques, the pilot study found no evidence of officers being less likely to physically intervene where there was risk to their or the public’s safety.
There are many examples of police officers bravely facing dangerous situations, like the recent violent disorder that has broken out in parts of England. It is more vital than ever to provide our police officers with training that is relevant and gives them the skills and confidence they need to face these types of challenges.
92% of officers were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with this training, while 89% of officers said the course was relevant to the demands of their job.
You can read the evaluation of the pilot in full on the National Police Library.
The learning for me is what is remembered in the future. So it's the transfer of the skills that they're practicing in here through the scenarios which are replicating what they might experience in their role as an officer, whatever their role might be.
It is wider things than just an isolated skill, so it's actually how we speak to people, how we communicate, what models of communication we're using.
Are we able to de-escalate, are we genuinely getting practice in using those forms of skills to actually work out what the problem is, what our strategy is going to be, and how we're going to achieve that outcome.
We're producing officers who are better communicators, better aware of threat and risk and actually better at resolving things in a much safer way: safer for the members of the public and safer for them as officers and their colleagues.
The scenario is absolutely the vehicle for looking at the whole complexity and the range of skills where they're actually physical skills, mental skills, verbal skills. I think that recreating situations that could happen in the workplace and getting a chance to practice those, and the complexity of all the associated skills, is definitely the absolute win of scenario training.
