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A narrative review of existing research literature was conducted to identify practices that are likely to improve the quality of de-escalation and use-of-force training for police officers.

Previous reviews of de-escalation and use-of-force training literature were examined to identify promising training practices, and more targeted literature searches of various databases were undertaken to learn more about the potential impact of each practice on a trainee's ability to learn, retain, and transfer their training. Semi-structured interviews with five subject matter experts were also conducted to assess the degree to which they believed the identified practices were relevant to de-escalation and use-of-force training, and would enhance the quality of such training.

Twenty practices emerged from the literature search. Each was deemed relevant and useful by the subject matter experts. These could be mapped on to four elements of training: (1) commitment to training (e.g. securing organizational support for training), (2) development of training (e.g. aligning training formats with learning objectives), (3) implementation of training (e.g. providing effective corrective feedback) and (4) evaluation and ongoing assessment of training (e.g. using multifaceted evaluation tools to monitor and modify training as necessary).

This review of training practices that may be relevant to de-escalation and use-of-force training is the broadest one conducted to date. The review should prompt more organized attempts to quantify the effectiveness of the training practices (e.g. through meta-analyses), and encourage more focused testing in a police training environment to determine their impact.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of juvenile psychopathy, as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL: YV).

Using a sample of 2,042 male youths from the USA, Canada, and the UK, the study was a conceptual replication of Bishopp and Hare’s (2008) multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis of adult male offenders assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised.

The scaling analyses generally replicated those obtained by Bishopp and Hare, providing support for a multidimensional, four-factor model of juvenile psychopathy similar to that obtained with adults. However, a small number of items fell outside their predicted regions. Slight differences in the structure of juvenile psychopathy were found for incarcerated and supervised samples of youth, with the four-factor model breaking down slightly for the supervised sample. Item misplacements may indicate that certain items on the PCL: YV are being misinterpreted, reflect different dimensions for different samples, or cannot be reliably measured. Future research should examine these possibilities, with special attention being paid to supervised samples.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first known attempts to use MDS analysis to examine the psychopathy structures that emerge for male juvenile offenders. The greater nuances afforded by using MDS offer a more comprehensive understanding of psychopathy between incarcerated and supervised youth using the PCL: YV.

There has been an increasing emphasis on developing officers who can effectively make decisions in dynamic and stressful environments to manage volatile situations. The aim of this paper is to guide those seeking to optimize the limited resources dedicated to police training.

Drawing on research related to stress exposure training, principles of adult learning, the event-based approach to training and policing more broadly, the authors show how carefully crafted training scenarios can maximize the benefits of police training.

The authors’ review highlights various training principles that, if relied on, can result in scenarios that are likely to result in the development of flexible, sound decision-making skills when operating under stressful conditions. The paper concludes with an example of scenario development, which takes the reviewed principles into account.

The authors hope this discussion will be useful for police instructors and curriculum designers in making evidence-informed decisions when designing training scenarios.

Case linkage theory and practice have received growing empirical support; however, they have yet to be examined fully within Australia. For sexual assault case linkage to be successful, it is assumed that a serial rapist will behave relatively consistently across offences yet distinctively compared to other offenders. The purpose of this paper is to test the underlying principles of case linkage, behavioural consistency and distinctiveness, as well as distinguishing accuracy.

In total, 250 solved stranger rapes by 171 offenders (46 serial rapists, 125 one-off rapists) were taken from Queensland Police Service (QPS) crime records. All possible crime pairings were created and cross-crime similarity was assessed using Jaccard’s coefficient. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis was used to examine the ability to distinguish between linked and unlinked offence pairs.

Serial linked pairs had the highest Jaccard’s coefficient (0.456), followed by non-serial unlinked (0.253) and finally, serial unlinked pairs (0.247). Within the ROC analysis, an area under the curve value was found of 0.913, indicating excellent distinguishing accuracy. Both the underlying principles of behavioural consistency and distinctiveness were supported through theoretical and practical methods. This paper provides the first analysis of serial rape case linkage in Australia, adding validity to this practice.

The authors wish to acknowledge the support and assistance from the QPS in undertaking this research. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the QPS and any errors of omission or commission are the responsibility of the authors.

This paper provides validity to the practice of case linkage using a database within Australia. The results of this paper can be used to inform investigators of serial offender behaviours. The theories of offender consistency and distinctiveness are supported, highlighting the importance of behavioural evidence for practitioners. This paper provided a practical increase of the quantity and quality of offences uploaded on the Australian violent and sexual crimes database, which will assist further linkage efforts.

This paper is the first in Australia to examine consistency, distinctiveness and case linkage of serial stranger rape. Thus is contributes significantly not only to an increased understanding of serial rape and case linkage in Australia but also brings Australia closer to modern research practices in this field.

Crime linkage analysis (CLA) can be applied in the police investigation-phase to sift through a database to find behaviorally similar cases to the one under investigation and in the trial-phase to try to prove that the perpetrator of two or more offences is the same, by showing similarity and distinctiveness in the offences. Lately, research has moved toward more naturalistic settings, analyzing data sets that are as similar to actual crime databases as possible. One such step has been to include one-off offences in the data sets, but this has not yet been done with homicide. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how linking accuracy of serial homicide is affected as a function of added hard-to-solve one-off offences.

A sample (N = 117–1160) of Italian serial homicides (n = 116) and hard-to-solve one-off homicides (n = 1–1044, simulated from 45 cases) was analyzed using a Bayesian approach to identify series membership, and a case by case comparison of similarity using Jaccard’s coefficient. Linking accuracy was evaluated using receiver operating characteristics and by examining the sensitivity and specificity of the model.

After an initial dip in linking accuracy (as measured by the AUC), the accuracy increased as more one-offs were added to the data. While adding one-offs made it easier to identify correct series (increased sensitivity), there was an increase in false positives (decreased specificity) in the linkage decisions. When rank ordering cases according to similarity, linkage accuracy was affected negatively as a function of added non-serial cases.

While using a more natural data set, in terms of adding a significant portion of non-serial homicides into the mix, does introduce error into the linkage decision, the authors conclude that taken overall, the findings still support the validity of CLA in practice.

This is the first crime linkage study on homicide to investigate how linking accuracy is affected as a function of non-serial cases being introduced into the data.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework, which describes how police training programs can be developed in order to improve learning retention and the transfer of skills to the work environment.

A brief review is provided that describes training strategies stemming from Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), a well‐established theory of instructional design. This is followed by concrete examples of how to incorporate these strategies into police training programs.

The research reviewed in this paper consistently demonstrates that CLT‐informed training improves learning when compared to conventional training approaches and enhances the transferability of skills.

Rarely have well‐validated theories of instructional design, such as CLT, been applied specifically to police training. Thus, this paper is valuable to instructional designers because it provides an evidence‐based approach to training development in the policing domain.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is mandated by the international community to collect, analyse and disseminate internationally comparable statistics on education, including those on and related to teachers. Based within a framework that emphasises quantity and quality issues for teachers, this chapter describes the current UIS international collection of teacher data, the policy options they intend to inform, as well as key limitations and challenges of the present data. In reaction to this, the chapter also presents UIS’s on-going developmental work related to the global data collection and statistics on primary and secondary teachers ranging from the measurement of current shortages, particularly in developing countries aiming to achieve universal primary education (UPE), to the expansion of an international framework that sheds additional light on teacher and teaching quality.

The reports seem contradictory. With about three billion dollars per year in new loan commitments, the World Bank has become the single largest source of development capital in the field of international education. These resources help expand educational opportunities for young women in South Asia and rebuild primary schools following civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. They support textbooks, school meals, new curriculum, and teacher training in thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of locations in over 100 countries in six regions.

This study examined the consequences of training on organizations. With data collected from 464 U.S. law enforcement agencies, training effects were explored in terms of crime control performance and sworn officers' resignation in regression analysis. According to the findings, training did not significantly improve crime control performance and police officers tended to stay in current organizations when they received a longer training. This study also found that law enforcement agencies in large cities tended to require longer training hours for their police officers.