In recent decades, police education has, especially in Europe, shifted from vocational training schools run directly by the police to university degrees, albeit in very diverse ways and for different reasons (Cordner, 2019; Paterson, 2011, 2015; Rogers & Frevel, 2018; Williams & Paterson, 2021). Changes like these are not limited to the police, as the education of several other professions has been reformed to higher education levels in recent decades, e.g., teacher training and nursing education (Björnsdóttir, 2015; Brint et al., 2005; Jóhannsdóttir, 2012). In this presentation we examine what characterizes the discourse on police education reform in Icelandic policy documents in 2014–2016.

As a part of a larger police reform where the number of police districts was reduced from 15 to 9, the police basic education in Iceland was reformed to the university level by amending the Police Act in 2016 (Parliamentary law bill no. 1215, case no. 742). It was subsequently decided that the University of Akureyri would offer a two-year undergraduate police program that grants the right to an appointment as a police officer. The premises of the reform were put forth in the explanations in the legislative bill.

In the preparation for the changes to university education, two separate working groups were formed and delivered reports on the matter. One compared the status of police education in the Nordic countries (Ministry of the Interior, 2014); the other dealt with the question of whether and how police education needed to change (Ministry of the Interior, 2015). These reports were inherently administrative reports of working groups based only to a small extent on scientific evidence and without the involvement of the university community in Iceland.

In several European countries, the Bologna process has led to reforms in police education, where police academies were granted university status (Jaschke & Neidhardt, 2007; Paterson, 2015). In 2008 the Danish police training was reformed at university level as part of wider police reform efforts. According to Diderichsen (2017) one of the main reasons for the reform has to do with credentialism. The Danish police is an institution that is constantly under pressure to appear as a legitimate, modern and efficient organization. Comparison with other professions was a part of the discourse and one of the arguments Diderichsen makes in the Danish education reform is that police education should mimic the evolution of nursing and teaching to professional undergraduate degrees.

Recently, Terpstra and Schaap (2022) compared police education reform to university level from a policy perspective in Norway, Finland, and North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.  Their findings highlight the same arguments appeared across the nations, including assisting the police in adapting to a changing society, enhancing the appeal of the police profession, keeping police training from falling behind other professions, and enhancing police-citizen interactions. The establishment and development of higher police education were significantly influenced by particular historical or political circumstances as well as organizational structures of the police. The higher police education systems are accepted as genuine in all three nations, but there are strong, continuous discussions regarding their structure and content (Terpstra & Schaap, 2022).

From the literature, it appears that police education reform has not been an easy linear process in other countries but rather significantly influenced by historical and political factors. In this study, we use historical discourse analysis to examine how the main arguments for police education reform in Iceland are discussed in Icelandic policy documents. The main questions in this presentation are: What characterizes the discourse on police education reform in Icelandic policy documents? What are the main legitimating principles in the discourse?

This study is based on the approach of historical discourse analysis, which is a six-step approach to analyze discourse regarding specific issues and is often utilized on policy documents (Jóhannesson, 2010; Sharp & Richardson, 2001). The approach to understanding discourse used in this analysis derives from Foucault (1979). Its main aim is to search for the rules that historically and politically determine what can and cannot be said, where and how. The first step in this approach was to identify the issue to be studied. The issue at hand was the discourse on police education reform in Icelandic policy documents in 2014–2016. The second step in this approach was to gather and select the materials that was suitable for answering the research questions. In the process of deciding which documents were relevant to the analysis we examined the Police Union Magazine, reports by ministerial working groups, Parliament committee recommendation, newspaper articles, letters sent by stakeholders and formal reviews to the draft of the legislative bill as well as the commentary that accompanied the bill. In the end we decided to study three types of texts, 1) two formal ministerial policy documents, 2) official recommendation in the parliament Standing Committee on Judicial Affairs and Education, and 3) commentary that accompanied the bill passed by Parliament to amend the Police Act 90/1996. The third step in this research was analyzing the documents to identify discursive themes. Discursive themes are recurrent ideas, words, phrases, and categories as well as practices that can be recognized as well as ideas that one would expect to discover yet are only occasionally or never stated (Jóhannesson, 2010). Understanding what is not being discussed is also crucial (Foucault, 1979; Sharp & Richardson, 2001). Such pauses and gaps are a component of the conversation since they reveal what is legitimate not to discuss. Silence about a certain topic can therefore be viewed as a discursive theme (Jóhannesson, 2010). The fourth step in this research is also a part of the document analysis but going deeper by examining how the discursive themes form patterns that form legitimating principles in the discourse, i.e., what is appropriate or safe to express at certain times or context (Bourdieu, 1988; Jóhannesson, 2010). The fifth step is to explore historical conjuncture of discourses and the sixth and final step in historical discourse analysis is to write a report.

The preliminary findings from the analysis identified three overall themes and two important silences. University degrees to meet the needs of a changing society A consistent theme throughout the two working group reports is the need for specialization within the police service to a changing society. Emphasized that police officers must have a university degree, as many professions in which police officers collaborate with. In the discourse the university system is seen as the legitimate authority for police training, given the educational reforms already implemented in Norway, Denmark and Finland. Production of police-specific knowledge and Police Professionalization through Specialization and Certification In the both the working group reports phrases and ideas point to issues of police-specific knowledge and police professionalization through specialization and certification in the context of police-driven evidence-based reforms in Iceland. Curriculum control The first theme specifically focuses on continued police ownership of the core police education curriculum. It notes that policing is seen as a specialty and there is skepticism about a university's ability to fully prepare students for the profession. There is also indication of a power struggle over ownership of the curriculum. Silence about police student gender, background and values Diversity is mentioned in the reports as important but when it comes to equal gender ratio or diversity such as immigrant background there is silence in the report. Silence about attracting the best and the brightest people to policing With changes in society, reforming police training to the general university system could be a major reason for the police to take this step but there was silence on this issue. According to the preliminary findings, two types of contradictions were found in the documents: Police versus university control over the curriculum and specialized police knowledge/competence versus the importance of a university degree.

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