CR5011 - Professional Standards and Police Integrity

The module aims to further develop your skills in areas such as group discussion and debate as well as independent learning. Weekly lectures will frame the discussion of each area of the syllabus. Teaching will employ the use of a set of key instances of police misconduct and related challenges which will be worked through and revisited throughout the lecture and seminar workshop programme. The learning experience will develop your understanding of the development of strategies to develop integrity and values within policing and to expand your theoretical knowledge and your ability to engage in debates concerning policy development and practice. Lectures will introduce theory, research policy and practice connections and will stimulate and provoke your thinking. Seminars will follow a more student-led, workshop format. For each seminar workshop you are likely to engage in work as part of a discussion group to unpack, debate, research and analyse a set of provocative questions via a case study or alternative exercise. You will also have space to develop your own thinking and position as a scholar of policing and criminology. The seminar workshops are tailored to the learning preferences of the students on the module each year and these are determined in consultation with you and your cohort in the first weeks. The learning and teaching on this module allows us to oscillate between theory and practice. Formative assessment is built into the seminar workshop and lecture programme. Further development of your confidence in synthesising, explaining and discussing information from a range of sources is also a key aim of the approach taken in this module.

Developing your ability to reflect informatively, and think critically about some of the challenges posed by considering links between policing, professional practice, integrity and accountability is central to this module. The module encourages you to make appropriate connections between theory, research, policy and practice in terms of policing, partner agencies and the wider criminal justice system. As part of your intellectual development, you will receive support from your peers in the classroom and from the module tutor/s throughout the module.

Support outside the classroom includes additional academic support via 1-1 tutorial support opportunities that we encourage you to take up with the module tutor/s.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. Online reading lists (provided after enrolment) give you access to your reading material for your modules. The Library works in partnership with your module tutors to ensure you have access to the material that you need.

Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the module you should be able to: 1. Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of professional standards and integrity in the context of contemporary policing. 2. Demonstrate your ability to identify, explain, evaluate systems of accountability and their importance in terms of public trust and confidence and police effectiveness. Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities: By the end of the module you should be able to: 3. Communicate your knowledge and ability to analyse key principles and policy in relation to professional standards and police integrity. 4. Understand the variety of policy/guidance documents relating to professional standards, integrity and police accountability. Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
By the end of the module you should have developed the ability to: 5. understand why police face particular challenges in terms of professional standards and integrity. 6. Enhance your knowledge and understanding of key principles of formal and informal mechanisms for police accountability.

The summative assessment task for this module is a 3500-word assignment. The essay question will be provided to students in advance during the initial weeks of teaching. The assignment will require you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of key debates from the academic and policy literature. This will address all the module learning outcomes and is worth 100% of the final mark. Individual written feedback will be provided via Blackboard. Seminars will be used to support students with their final assessment and overall learning and will consist of exercises and tasks relating to the delivery of policing.

Assessment Criteria and Grade-Related Criteria will be made available to you to support you in completing assessments. Grade-Related Descriptors are descriptions of the level of skills, knowledge and/or attributes that you need to demonstrate in order achieve a certain grade or mark in an assessment, providing a mechanism by which the quality of an assessment can be measured and placed within the overall set of marks.

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This module will allow you to evaluate the importance of ethics and values in the delivery of policing, and the impact that this can have among diverse communities. The importance of police officers demonstrating fairness, ethics and integrity are outlined in relation to police legitimacy, public confidence and operational effectiveness.

The module will critically assess how police organisations and individual officers and staff are held to account, by external and internal means, and how previous examples of misconduct and malpractice can provide learning opportunities for future conduct. Accountability is considered in formal and informal terms at the level of individuals, organisational culture, and the strategic role of police in society. The nature, development and role of professional standards, in broad terms, is critically reviewed.