Teaching (social sciences) to the police: Insights from the classroom

Police training and education delivered by professionals and activists from outside the police field is a relatively common practice. “External” teaching can be perceived by police audiences as lacking legitimacy because of differences in professional culture, type of knowledge and skills, and background experiences. Based on a personal teaching experience to police audiences in the field of social sciences, this paper identifies several critical aspects to deal with this “externality”. The paper advocates for assuming and making good use of externality, and engaging empathetically with the variegated professional experience of police audiences. Also, it concludes that external professionals and activists in the field of social sciences need to be more conscious and critical about their own contribution to deal effectively with the “cultural gap”.