A FORMER officer and university lecturer in York says the next generation of police officers will be served better in later life thanks to new courses in the city.

Martin Holleran is the senior lecturer in Policing Studies at York St John University, but served for 30 years with police forces including North Yorkshire.

Courses available at the university from September include BA (Hons) Police Studies, Criminology with Police Studies, and Sociology with Police Studies, which Mr Holleran said would not only help the next generation of police officers into their careers, but afterwards as well.

He said: “People request to have degrees, but it won’t be seen as a career for working life. I think people will move in and out of policing so people may get a degree, do four or five years, then change direction, and something like this would give them skills to move into different areas. All those skills can be taken somewhere else.

“You can go through your whole police career now, which could be 35 years, and not have any formally recognised qualifications at the end of it whatsoever. But what we bring out of that, those skills that you bring into civilian life, are invaluable - planning, planning health and safety and organisation - they all come to the fore.”

Dozens of people have already signed up across the three degree programmes which run from September, and Mr Holleran said he hoped the courses would be able to work closely with North Yorkshire Police, potentially even allowing students to train alongside officers.

Mr Holleran said police forces have always been very good at teaching people “what they need to know in terms of how to enforce the law and policing procedure, but haven’t always got time to get people to fully understand why we police. What is it about society that makes policing so important”.

He said: “We want to be part of that next step in transforming the police service. It’s about the professionalisation of police force, putting it on the same standing as nursing midwifery and other services that require a degree to operate. We want to make a difference in people's lives. That’s why I did the job for 30 years and that’s why I’m doing this job now, because I want people to go out and make a difference in people's lives.”