An Effectiveness Evaluation of the Oregon State Revised Basic Police Academy Curriculum

Literature Review

There are over 650 basic police training academies in the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Reaves, 2016). These academies provide basic police training to groups or cohorts of recruits, of varying sizes depending on the size of the academy. Basic training typically includes a classroom-based academic component, for example learning about criminal and procedural law, and a skills-based component, for example arrest, control, and defensive tactics, weapons, and driving (Blumberg et al., 2019). The average length of basic police academy training is approximately 20 weeks. Although most academies require graduating recruits to go through a lengthy period of post-academy-graduation field training, a great deal of learning must occur at the academy, and it is a critically important phase in molding police officers.

No federal oversight or standardized curriculum exists, so State boards are typically responsible for establishing and certifying curriculum content and training hours required (Bykov, 2014; Caro, 2011). All of the academies within the state then adhere to the standards set by the POST. Some academies will only train recruits who have already been hired by a department, and others will provide training to those seeking employment (in which case some kind of written exam post-training is required for certification). Some academies tend towards “stress-based” approaches, which are modeled after a military basic training (boot camp) and are highly tactical and skill-based (Bickel, 2013). In this approach, stress comes from instructors disciplining recruits, such as using sit-ups or pushups for getting an incorrect answer. For example, one stress-based academy would quiz recruits in line for meals on various elements of courses they were taking. Recruits who got an answer wrong would be sent to the back of the line, reducing the amount of time they had to eat, in an already limited meal break. There is a distinct lack of evidence on the effectiveness of this approach, and critics suggest it promotes aggression, defensiveness, and maladaptive coping mechanisms (Conti, 2009).