Police training and development plays a key role in INTERPOL’s overall mission to promote international police co-operation. The aim is to help officials in INTERPOL’s 187 member countries to improve their operational effectiveness, enhance their skills and build their capacity to address the increasingly globalised and sophisticated nature of criminality today.
INTERPOL offers many tools and services – for example, databases – to its member countries. To ensure that members can fully understand and use them, INTERPOL has launched a number of initiatives aimed at developing expertise and facilitating knowledge-sharing.
To acknowledge the considerable importance that INTERPOL attaches to the training needs of member countries, the Organization decided to designate Police training and development as its fourth core function in 2007.
Objectives
The strategic objectives for INTERPOL’s training activities for 2008-2010 are as follows:
- Help member countries bridge the gap between national and international policing;
- Provide countries with the knowledge, skills and best practices to meet the policing challenges of the 21 st century;
- Ensure that law enforcement agencies are fully aware of and take advantage of the services provided by INTERPOL;
- Enhance the awareness, knowledge and skills of INTERPOL staff through a structured training programme, including developmental training;
- Engender a learning culture within INTERPOL that binds the organization together through a shared understanding of its values, purposes, core businesses and processes.
INTERPOL Guide for Effective Training
The INTERPOL Guide for Effective Training explains how training needs are identified and assessed, the steps required to design, plan and implement quality training programmes, and how evaluations and assessments should be conducted. Aimed at police leaders and officers involved in police training, this comprehensive guide is available on the NCB Dashboard.
Annual operational calendar
A list of all operational training courses delivered or co-ordinated by the General Secretariat is available to all member countries via the NCB Dashboard. It can be found in the INTERPOL Calendar of Events under the section “Operational training”. In 2007, 70 training programmes were delivered benefiting 1,837 participants from 155 countries, while in 2006, 52 police training programmes or workshops were delivered.
INTERPOL International Police Training Programme
INTERPOL has developed an advanced 10-week training programme for police officers from law enforcement agencies and National Central Bureaus. It is aimed at officers with responsibility for international police co-operation, using the NCB network and working with INTERPOL’s systems and services.
Participants who - should be officers of sufficient rank to bring about change and improvement upon return to their respective administrations – gain knowledge and skills through training and hands-on experience by working at the General Secretariat. Three sessions will be conducted in 2008. Information is made available on the NCB Dashboard.
Internal Training for General Secretariat staff
INTERPOL has a responsibility to ensure that all staff members are fully trained to perform their duties effectively and efficiently. Competency-based training is adopted with the identification and establishment of core competencies for staff. In addition, continuity and “organizational memory” is being established through the sharing of knowledge.
Recommendations for future projects
The 16th INTERPOL Symposium for the Heads of Police Training held in Johannesburg in March 2007 adopted five recommendations, including the following two:
- To establish a working group to study the creation of a global INTERPOL Learning Management System (now known as INTERPOL Global Learning Centre), including: a directory of experts that member countries can refer to for consultation; a library of e-learning packages and training programmes for member countries to share their training resources; and a depository of research papers and best practices to facilitate the exchange of information.
- To encourage member countries to incorporate training modules on INTERPOL and its services into appropriate training programmes at police institutions and NCBs.
