Policing the Police: an analysis of practitioner views of the IOPC’s Learning the Lessons Magazine

The ‘Learning the Lessons’ magazine, published by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), has been in circulation since 2007; in March 2018 the magazine was given a new format by the new Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), who had started operations in January 2018. The magazine is promoted as being useful for police practitioners, community groups, and those with an interest in policing; and aims to highlight learning from mistakes in policing with the purpose of avoiding errors in future. This research aims to understand, (1) how the magazine is used by practitioners within policing, (2) explore distribution and access of the magazine and (3) explore practitioner views of the magazine and the IOPC’s role in producing this magazine. This research involved interviewing 17 participants in three police services in England and Wales, with participants drawn from Professional Standards Departments (PSD), Learning and Development teams (L&D), and the IOPC. This research will utilise a qualitative approach to gather data. The analysis of the data highlighted that the overall use of the magazine was sporadic and was not distributed widely by the police. Instead, relying on officers to distribute the magazine to the relevant departments. However, those that did engage with the magazine did find the learning within it to be relevant to policing.