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Abstract

Special Constables (Specials) are volunteer police officers who provide an invaluable contribution to policing by supplementing Regular police officers (Regulars) (Callender et al., 2018; CoP, 2020a). However, Specials are poorly understood, and their numbers have dwindled since 2012, bringing them to an all-time low (Britton, 2020). This explorative study into Hampshire Constabulary’s (Hampshire’s) Special Constabulary examines what motivates Specials to volunteer and whether their deployments are effective. The study also compares Hampshire’s attrition rates with national figures, examines why Specials decide to leave and how retention can be improved. The study’s mixed methods research included an online survey with serving Specials in Hampshire and secondary data from Hampshire and the Home Office.
The main conclusions of the study discovered a phenomenon that the most common reasons motivating Specials to volunteer were altruistic. It also found fewer Specials were motivated to join the Regulars compared with existing studies. Feeling valued, particularly by Regular teams and Regular line managers and matching a Special’s interest with their role, increases the number of hours they commit. Compared with the current literature, Hampshire was more effective at matching roles with interests but less effective at utilising Specials’ outsider skills/experiences. However, this study found some ambiguity surrounding what type of outsider skills/experiences are transferable to policing, which requires further research. The examination of Hampshire’s attrition rates compared with its Most Similar Groups found no consistent pattern. The study found Regular recruitment affects Special’s attrition, but mass recruitment of Specials obscures natural attrition rates. The study also identified that the main contributing factors causing Specials to leave or consider leaving were internal factors - ‘poor management/organisation’ and ‘feeling undervalued’. The study concludes with recommendations to improve the retention of Hampshire’s Specials.

Course: Policing and Investigation - BSc (Hons)

Date Deposited: 2021-11-05

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13729.html