Research Brief
What Do Police Recruits Identify as Strategies to Deal with Their
Triggers/Biases to Deliver Fair and Impartial Policing?

Principal
Researcher(s) &
Affiliation(s)

April 5 2018
Introduction

Md Asif Hossain
Advisors: Marjory
Jardine & Nora
Houlahan
Research Field
Police recruit training
Student Involvement
N/A

The JIBC Police Academy moved away from the traditional lecture based
curriculum delivery model and adopted a new competency based education
model in 2016. Under the new curriculum the recruits learn concepts and skills
through case based and practical scenarios in order to move towards
professional competence (JIBC Police Academy proposal, ca. 2015). Post
scenario debriefs focus on both practical and reflective skills. The main
objective of this project is to learn how police recruits identify their biases and
what strategies they utilize to deal with such biases and triggers to ensure their
investigations are fair and impartial in the scenario-based training environment.
Methods

Funding Sources
N/A: Course-based
Project.

The study examined the training material from one class of 48 police recruits
who had already completed the first part of their training (Block I of recruit
training). After receiving the ethics approval from the JIBC Ethics Review
Board, the data was obtained from the debrief forms that recruits filled out after
each scenario. The answers to questions “What strategies did you use, or could
you have used, to ensure your investigations were fair, impartial, and bias
free?” and “Is there anything that the subjects did/said that caused you to react
negatively to them (what are your triggers)?” were analyzed using NVivo
version 11.4.

Project Period
From: January 2018
To: April 2018

A qualitative research method and the grounded theory was used for this study
to analyze the recruits’ responses to the questions in their scenario debrief forms
related to bias and strategies for fair and impartial policing. The responses were
anonymous.

Partners &
Collaboration
N/A

Results
The final review of the seven selected articles focused on different aspects of
implicit bias in police officers including:

- Funded
- In Kind
-Total

$0.00
$0.00
$0.00

•
•
•
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The impact of internal stressors
The environmental impact or constant exposure to established attitudes,
Situational adaption of bias,
Bias driven by faulty perception.

The recruits identified three categories of triggers in their scenario training such
as:
• Subject actions

Research Brief
•
•

Subject characteristics
Call characteristics.

The strategies recruits used to deliver fair and impartial were:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Assertiveness
Focus on investigation objectives
Building rapport
Interpreting events with an open mind
Remaining calm
Respect

Discussion
The literature review provided context for the discussion on implicit bias in a broad policing context, however the
literature only focused on racial aspects of bias. Block 1 recruits, however, did not identify any racially based
biases from the scenarios. Recruits focused on subject actions, subject characteristics and call characteristics as
the source of their triggers. The majority of the literature comes from the U.S. where the racially based tensions
are very different than those in Canada. Implicit biases are not limited to racial friction between officers and
subjects. The literature does not identify other sources of bias, such as subject behavior or call characteristics that
can be important, particularly in a developing police recruit.
Limitations
The sample size was small and limited to the 48 recruits in one class in Block 1of training at JIBC. The second
challenge was due to the coverage of Canadian police topics and its volume of research literature being very low
(Huey, 2016). There is a gap between the literature findings and those of the current JIBC police recruit
study. This opens doors for new topics to be explored, and, existing topics to be built upon.
Conclusion and future research
The awareness and practice of self-reflection are two vital components of the JIBC Police Academy’s training
curriculum. It prepares recruits to recognize and mitigate any implicit bias triggered in any situation on their own.
Recommendations for future research include expanding the study by involving Block 3 recruits to find
additional themes for triggers, bias or strategies to mitigate such issues. Also, to follow up with the recruits who
have graduated from the Police Academy and are working in the field to examine whether the self-reflection
practice at the Police Academy did, or did not, actually build the reflective practice in the real world.
Key References
Huey, L., (2016). What one might expect: A scoping review of the Canadian policing research literature.
Sociology Publications, (Paper 36). Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/sociologypub/36
Justice Institute of British Columbia. (ca. 2015). Aligning recruit training with principles of competency based
education. New Westminster, BC: Author