Project information
Project managers
Cecilia Jonsson, Cecilia Jonsson, PhD, Senior Lecturer at the department of Criminology and Police Work och Magnus Persson, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Social studies.
Participating organisations
Linnaeus University, Politihøgskolen Oslo, Norway, The University of Akureyri, Iceland et al.
Financier
Linnaeus University and Politihøgskolen Oslo
Timetable
2025–2030
Subject
Social Studies (Department of Criminology and Police Work and Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences)
More about the project
RECPOL – Recruitment, Education and Careers in the Police – is a study focused on police recruitment and the socialization processes within police organizations and police education across Europe. RECPOL is designed as a long-term, comparative, and cross-national study that began in 2010. In 2025, the second round of RECPOL will begin with the participation of several European countries, including Sweden. The participating countries are democracies with civilian police services, yet recruitment processes and police education vary between them, raising questions about similarities and differences in who populates the European police organizations.
The overarching questions the RECPOL study aims to explore are:
- What characterizes individuals recruited into police work?
- How are they shaped by police education and their socialization into the profession?
- How do different systems of police recruitment and education influence police students’ and new officers’ perceptions of police work, as well as their attitudes, values, and professional choices?
The first round included participants from Belgium, Catalonia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden and resulted in the anthology Bjørgo, Tore & Damen, Marie-Louise (red.) (2020). The making of a police officer: comparative perspectives on police education and recruitment. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
The project is part of the research in the project A valid police (education)
