Professionalising Police Education in Iceland: Purposes and Knowledge Priorities

• In Event: International and Comparative Perspectives on Punishment, Social Control, and Crime

Abstract

Iceland’s police service has, in recent decades, been profoundly shaped by both external and internal pressures to professionalise. A key milestone was reached in 2016, when the Icelandic government moved initial police education to the university level. In this article, we examine to what extent Iceland’s 2016 police education reform has reshaped the professional purposes and knowledge priorities of initial police education as understood across policy, educational, and occupational domains. For our data, we analyse policy, legislative, and program documents alongside survey data from police students (N=504 and 193) and active police officers (N=360), which we interpret using Gert Biesta’s tripartite model of educational purposes (qualification, socialisation, and subjectification) as an analytical lens. Our findings indicate that the reform has strengthened qualification and broadened the ethical and relational dimensions of socialisation, while support for subjectification is only beginning to emerge through new opportunities for critical reflection and independent judgement. These developments suggest a shift toward a more coherent and comprehensive, yet still developing, model of police professionalism.

Authors

• Ólafur Örn Bragason, National Police Commissioner of Iceland

• Guðmundur Oddsson, University of Akureyri