Training and professional development are essential to the lawful functioning of the Dutch police. This is all the more important because the police hold a monopoly on the use of force: only police officers are permitted to use force under certain circumstances. Therefore, the official instructions stipulate that officers must not only act according to the principles of lawfulness, proportionality and subsidiarity, but must also be sufficiently trained in the use of force.
Despite its great societal importance, scientific knowledge about the most effective ways for the police to train and act remains limited. In other words, the evidence base is thin.
The chair of Evidence-based Training and Performance in Policing aims to contribute to the development of a robust knowledge base on which the police can ground their education, training and development activities. Through scientific research, insight is gained into the factors that contribute to learning, retaining and applying knowledge and skills, so that police officers are better prepared to act in complex and dynamic situations.
“Police work has become increasingly complex over the years, while the time available for training and development has not grown accordingly. In fact, basic police training has been shortened. This makes it all the more important to optimise the way police officers learn and train and scientific knowledge can play an important role in this. In my view, police officers deserve to be equipped as well as possible for their task,” says Hutter.
About the chair
The chair was established by the NSCR and is hosted at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences (FGB) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Interim director Peter van der Laan on the new chair: “Vana’s appointment as endowed professor of Evidence-based Training and Performance in Policing is a well-deserved recognition of her research and teaching in the field of training police officers and other security professionals. It fits beautifully with the NSCR’s police research and further strengthens the already intensified collaboration between the NSCR and FGB.”
Raôul Oudejans, Associate Professor at the Department of Human Movement Sciences at FGB: “The endowed chair for Vana is a wonderful and well-deserved recognition of and appreciation for her impactful research in, for and with police practice. Since much of her research into police officers’ perception, decision-making and action is rooted in human movement science, the chair offers excellent opportunities to further formalise, consolidate and expand the collaboration between the NSCR and FGB’s Department of Human Movement Sciences, in the form of ALERT@VU/NSCR (Amsterdam Law Enforcement Research Team).”
About Vana Hutter
Vana Hutter is a human movement scientist and sport and performance psychologist. After many years of teaching and conducting research in sport psychology, she moved into research in the security domain about ten years ago. As a senior researcher within the NSCR research group What Works in Policing, Hutter studies training and performance in the policing context. Her research focuses on situations in which police officers must take action and in which the interplay between perception, decision-making and action is crucial. In doing so, she collaborates closely with the National Police’s Operational Support and Training Sector and specialised units such as the DSI and the DKDB.
