Strong on the syllabus, but a daunting format

These books are from the Blackstone’s stable of Police Manuals and are primarily intended for those who must follow the Initial Crime Investigator’s Development Programme (ICIDP). Blackstones are the only publishers of manuals for Part 1 of the Sergeants and Inspectors promotion examinations, and they are the only provider of
a single text geared to the ICIDP syllabus.

The manual aims to provide the information necessary for the syllabus, but for reasons of completeness and explanation, must provide details that fall outside the scope of the examination syllabus. In order to distinguish the material outside the syllabus a broken black line appears in the margin indicating areas that will not be tested. Shaded areas highlight what the authors consider to be ‘key points’ and these are punctuated within the text. Unfortunately there are often fairly lengthy areas of shaded material, making it difficult for the reader to discriminate. The overall effect of this is to present the reader with a great deal of black letter law in a less than user-friendly format.

Since examinees may then follow the distance learning workbook, the expectation might be that it was the intention of the publishers to make use of the body of psychological knowledge which informs learning theory. It is encouraging to note that there is some effort to address this in the style of the workbook. There are activities, charts and some interesting scenarios. The book is explicit about the knowledge required for success and John Ridout provides some relief to the tedium of the manual.

If deep learning is to be encouraged, then the authors should seek to encourage Oxford University Press to invest in colour printing and adopt some of the practices now increasingly common with publishers who target the more demanding modern generation of students. Clearly the production cost is an issue for OUP and they must make commercial judgments; in the case of police manuals they may be motivated by the absence of competition and the need to keep the purchase price down.

So what do purchasers get for their money? The Manual has material on property offences, assaults, drugs, firearms, defences, sexual offences, evidence, bail, disclosure, inchoate offences, the administration of justice and inferences from silence. The appendix contains the Codes of Practice under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. For distance learning this scheme is replicated in the workbook, with sections geared to the manual’s content.
But the presentation of the material does lack coherence, undoubtedly a consequence of the prescriptive syllabus.

This means these textbooks are exclusively for the ICIDP syllabus, which appears to be either an attempt to encourage a narrow construction of the knowledge required by investigators, or a valiant effort to synthesise the minimum relevant law required to fulfil their task.
In any event the books are indispensable to ICIDP candidates. Let us hope that more creative writers and publishers step into the market soon.