COMPOSITE Newsletter Issue 1 - July 2012

Dear Subscriber/-in, 

COMPOSITE is a research project in 10 European countries that looks into large scale change processes in police forces all over Europe and attempts to find out what factors contribute to success or failure of these change processes.

This first newsletter of the project "Comparative Police Studies in the EU" contains information to the following subjects:

1. Welcome to the COMPOSITE newsletter
2. The COMPOSITE project is starting Action Line II
3. COMPOSITE End User Board Meeting in Durham (United Kingdom) in June 2012
4. Announcement: COMPOSITE Practitioners Conference in December 2012 in Potsdam (Germany)
5. Publication note: Gruschinske, Mario/Hirschmann, Nathalie & Stein-Müller, Susanne (2012): Europas Polizeien im Wandel. Vergleichende Polizeistudien in der Europäischen Union. In: SIAK Journal; 2/2012: 46-58.
6. Event: POLCON 3 conference in Liverpool (United Kingdom) in September 2012

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This is the first issue of our new COMPOSITE newsletter. The COMPOSITE newsletter will appear monthly and address issues around the research project “Comparative police studies in the EU” (COMPOSITE). It will also provide information on police related subjects, publication notes, information on conferences, meetings and other events as well as on current developments in the field of police research. The newsletter team consists of a group of researchers within the COMPOSITE project. If you want to receive the newsletter, please register on the COMPOSITE website: http://www.composite-project.eu/index.php/autoreg.html.

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After nearly two years of intensive research, the COMPOSITE project is now approaching its second phase. From May 29 until June 1, the project consortium met in the beautiful old town of Ohrid (Macedonia) to wrap up Action Line I and agree on the next steps regarding Action Line II. The consortium managed an ambitious agenda, dealing with issues of project management and dissemination, the European Police Monitor, an exploitation strategy and a training package on strategic management as well as questions of research strategy, interview protocols and data processing. Action Line I is rapidly approaching its end, and all the researchers who contributed to the voluminous reports have every reason to be proud of their work. Using this empirical foundation laid down in Action Line I, the focus of Action Line II will be on the processes that determine the success or failure of change processes within police organizations in the ten participating countries. Qualitative interviews, surveys and targeted studies in the police forces of these countries will provide an in-depth understanding of change processes and how they are influenced by organizational structure and culture (work package 5), leadership (work package 6) and identity (work package 7). Work package 4 (that runs through Action Line I as well as Action Line II) will examine the adaptation of ICT in the police forces of the participating countries. The results will enable us to examine the impact of key variables so that the design of organizational changes can be more accurate, opportunity costs can be minimised and the efficiency of these processes can be increased. Parallel to the research activities the dissemination (work package 9) and the exploitation (work package 10) of the project results will become increasingly important to ensure the practical benefit of the COMPOSITE project.

Publications and presentations regarding work packages 1, 2, 3 and 4 can be found on COMPOSITE website: www.composite-project.eu

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At this year’s first End User Board meeting held in Durham on June 12, senior police officers from the participating countries discussed the next steps of COMPOSITE research. In the picturesque and reverent setting of Durham’s Usher College, the expertise of End User Board members on procedures and questionnaires for Action Line II was in demand. Beforehand, key results of Action Line I were presented to the End User Board members by Les Graham (work packages 2 leader), Kamal Birdi (work packages 3 leader) and Sebastian Denef (work packages 4 leader).
The End User Board members gave their feedback on topics such as performance management indicators and questions of organisational culture in their respective police organisations. The next End User Board meeting will take place on December 10, 2012 in Potsdam (Germany) and be combined with a Practitioners Conference to discuss the research findings that will be accumulated until then (see also point 4 below).

The End User Board is an important part of the governing structure of COMPOSITE. It consists of EU police officers from all participating countries on operational and tactical levels. The members of the End User Board act as a sounding board for quality and relevance of the deliverables and are especially important to discuss cultural and national differences in police work.

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The first COMPOSITE Practitioners Conference will take place on December 11 until 12 2012 at the Mercure Hotel Potsdam City in Potsdam (Germany). The conference will bring together practitioners and scholars to discuss issues of change management in the police on the basis of research conducted by COMPOSITE. The conference will be organised by the University of Applied Sciences of the State Police of Brandenburg (FHPol, Germany).

The FHPol-team is currently collecting and evaluating potential topics for the conference programme. Further information will be provided soon.

In connection with the Practitioners Conference the next End User Board as well as Strategic Advisory Board member meeting will be held on December 10 2012 at the same venue.

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Gruschinske, Mario/Hirschmann, Nathalie & Stein-Müller, Susanne (2012): Europas Polizeien im Wandel. Vergleichende Polizeistudien in der Europäischen Union. In: SIAK Journal; 2/2012: 46-58.

An article of the German country team (Mario Gruschinske, Nathalie Hirschmann, Susanne Stein-Müller), titled “Europe’s police in change. Comparative studies of police in the European Union”, is going to be published in the journal of the Austrian Security Academy (SIAK Journal - Zeitschrift für Polizeiwissenschaften und Polizeiliche Praxis) in the second quarter of 2012. Focussing on police forces in Germany, some results of the project’s work packages 1 and 2 are presented. Regarding Germany, the findings of work package 2 give a first impression of factors enabling and obstructing the adaptation of police forces to environmental changes. The article closes with a perspective for future research within COMPOSITE and explains the importance of the research findings for change management strategies within Europe’s police forces.

For more information regarding SIAK journal visit: http://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/BMI_SIAK/ifwuf/SIAK_Journal.aspx

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The John Moores University in Liverpool (United Kingdom) holds the “Third Annual Conference of the Higher Education Forum for Learning and Development in Policing” (POLCON 3) on September 4 until 5 2012: "Within the reform agenda for policing, the debate over professionalisation is at centre stage while within higher education, changes in funding arrangements are opening up new opportunities that the police service can exploit. With a view to opening up debate about how higher education can best support police service human resource strategies and the professionalisation agenda we have secured an impressive list of key note speakers, the contributions of whom are influencing policy on a national scale.”  The call for papers deadline has been extended to July 29 2012.

For more information visit: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/POLCON3/index.htm

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