POL-RECRAFT: Policing by soft skills. Training in relational craftmanship

The aim of POL-RECRAFT is to introduce POLice training in RElational CRAFTmanship in Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain in a first instance, and to introduce the training in the rest of Europe thereafter.
On a practical level, the consortium aims to create multiple training modules that will help street-level police officers improve their level of ‘relational craftmanship’, a combination of communicative, social and digital competences, but also trust building, law enforcement and networking. The training will be developed through four underlying objectives; (1) Develop an in-depth understanding of soft skills needed for day-to-day street-level police work in three cities in Belgium,The Netherlands and Spain, (2) Detect skills gaps experienced by these police officers and match these to existing educational tools to acquire soft skills and relational craftmanship, (3) Develop and test different training modules with street-level police officers in each city, (4) Spread the knowledge & share results to promote the training in national police academies and police units across Europe.
By working closely with actors in the field at each of these stages, aided by the design thinking approach (see below), we aim to provide concrete and relevant solutions to existing difficulties in the field. Through partnering up across educational and police sectors, the project aims to combine, and essentially co-create, knowledge that is present in both sectors, and produce training that is inherently practical and instantly usable in the day-to-day policing practice. On a societal level, by training street-level police officers, we aim to improve interactions with the public and address crises of confidence in police that have been observed across the continent. Countries that have included some social skills training in the curriculum show this does have important effects on trust in police (Bloksgaard & Prieur, 2021). Police research also indicates systematically that the public’s judgement of police performance is based on perceptions of how people are treated (Verwee, 2013). Better contacts with citizens can thus improve citizens’ perceptions of police, which may ultimately also improve police effectiveness in dealing with crime. After all, the police is mainly a reactive rather than a proactive instance, and largely dependent of what the public reports (Brodeur, 2007, Wadman, 2009…). If trust in the police is lacking, this can have consequences on the willingness of the citizens to report crimes and share information, and thus the capacity of police to solve crime (Verwer & Walberg, 2012). So, focusing on - and improving - relational craftmanship with a diversity of communities could ultimately also improve effectiveness of the police in dealing with crime and generate more secure societies.