Elucidate police psychology.

 American Psychology Association (APA, 2019) has defined police psychology as psychology applied to policing. It is defined as the application of psychological principles and methods to law enforcement.

The functions of police psychologist have been given by APA as consisting of screening and hiring police officers, conducting screening for special squad, evaluation of police personnel for mental and physical fitness to join duty, where peoplehave been taken on hostage, police psychologists carry on hostage negotiations, conducting training programmes in large number of areas for the police personnel as for example training in motivation, human relations, stress management etc. In addition, police psychologist also takes up consultation and stress counselling of the police personnel. (Kitaeff, 2011)

Police psychologist needs to have special knowledge about policing and many functions and organisations of police in a society. A police psychologist understands the goals of police and help and assist them to achieve the same. Since police has its important function to ensure law Police Psychology enforcement, police psychology helps and assists in this aspect in a big way.

Towards this goal, police psychologists need to have a thorough knowledge of police personality, the stresses and the trauma they undergo, their working environment and various other problems they face in their functioning, in addition to working out a plan of treatment intervention to help the police personnel overcome their trauma and the post traumatic stress disorder which is reported by police personnel as a result of their risky and dangerous work. Also police psychologists are used for research, consultation and training programmes, as they are proficient in experimental, social, industrial and organisational psychology.

In the beginning when clinical psychologists were employed in police settings, they mainly evaluated the police applicants in terms of their fitness suitability for police job at different levels. However as the work of police psychologists expanded, they started being involved in training officers at different levels and in quite a few situations they were also the task of educating the police officers and police personnel.

The police psychologists apply their knowledge of science and psychology mainly to pre-employment assessments of prospective candidates to the police force, fitness for duty evaluations, clinical interventions, operational support and organisational consultation.

They may also apply behavioural intervention strategies including cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy, behaviour modification approaches etc.

In training police psychologists also focus on how far the intervention has been effective and compare through research methods the prior status to crisis intervention and post status intervention and evaluate the degree of improvement effected through intervention.

There are many modalities of treatment available to police personnel that are imparted through training by police psychologists. Police psychologists use many treatment interventions such as the Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), which is a form of psychotherapy in which the client or patient is made to recall images that are distressing to him/ her .

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