The College of Policing have recently published the new Code of Ethics for 2024. At over 10,000 words however, and across multiple pages on the College’s website, it’s a hefty read for busy cops and aspiring police leaders. There’s not currently a PDF you can just download and read through, as there was with the 2014 Code.
To support different learning styles and try and make sense of the somewhat overwhelming information for you, I’ve summarised key aspects of the COE in a more visual way in this blog. This includes images, word clouds, and also audio format via a dedicated new free episode on my Police Promotion and Leadership Podcast. I have also produced a 3 minute summary video on the Rank Success YouTube channel. I hope you find these helpful aids in briefing yourself and your wider team members. But for more info and a written appraisal of the new Code, read on…
An Overview of the 2024 Code of Ethics
After three years in the making, lots of Committees, and extensive consultation with the public, Police Federation, academics, and other interested parties, the College published its new Code of Ethics in late January 2024. It comprises of three parts designed to guide all in policing and ensure they are:
“Doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time” – College of Policing
The Code of Ethics is formed by three main parts, which are as follows:
- Part 1: Ethical Policing Principles. These are the suite of statements the College want to guide and support people’s behaviour in policing, and this is the main bit everyone should read (1,500 words).
- Part 2: Guidance for Ethical and Professional Behaviour in Policing. Very long at 6,500 words, nice to know.
- Part 3: Code of Practice for Ethical Policing. Statutory and specific to the actions Chief Officers must take to promote ethical behaviour (2,200 words).
If you want the gist of the entirety of the Code, I’ve taken all the 10,000+ words and put into a neat word cloud infographic for you, as previewed in the header image above. In the following video, I summarise the entire Code in three minutes…
So given Part 1 is most important for everyone in policing to read, let’s go a bit further into that…
Part 1: Ethical Policing Principles – Guiding Statements
“Each of us is responsible for upholding the integrity of our profession. We support each other, but never to the detriment of the public. We treat each other with respect and behave in ways that demonstrate and reinforce the standards of our society and the standards expected of us. The ethical policing principles help us to achieve this.” – College of Policing
There are three main Ethical Policing Principles to the Code of Ethics, which are described by the College as follows:
- Courage: Making, communicating and being accountable for decisions, and standing against anything that could bring our profession into disrepute.
- Respect and Empathy: Encouraging, listening to and understanding the views of others, and seeking to recognise and respond to the physical, mental and emotional challenges that we and other people may face.
- Public Service: Working in the public interest, fostering public trust and confidence, and taking pride in providing an excellent service to the public.
The College explain that the ethical policing principles are a series of what they call ‘guiding statements’. These statements should be used to “help people in policing do the right things, in the right way, for the right reasons”.
This is the part which I recommend busy operational cops should read right now; especially if you are seeking promotion through the ranks! This is the bit you’ll need to be aware of, remember and be able to demonstrate your leadership awareness of.
However, this new Code of Ethics really is multi-layered, and it’s east to get bemused by seemingly endless bullet points when reading off the College’s website.
You might have noticed, it’s not just three things to remember; it’s 15. That’s because each of the three principles have five sub-principles. Then beyond that, there’s a further nearly 50 bullet point ‘guiding statements’ expanding on the sub-principles… phew! This is surprising, given a key finding in the College’s own public consultation on its first draft included that the principles and guidance were “too wordy and difficult to remember and read”.
It’s also why I thought I’d do the usual ‘Rank Success’ thing, to add value by helping make sense of the very detailed content and summarise it in a user friendly way. It can also aid understanding to have things presented in different ways! So here’s the gist of each principle, where I’ve highlighted the key words to take note of, then plugged everything else into a word cloud to give you the gist. The size of the word in the circular word cloud relates to how often it is mentioned (and therefore its importance)…
COURAGE
RESPECT AND EMPATHY
PUBLIC SERVICE
The astute promotion candidates among you might notice there is heavy overlap among the ‘principles’ with the behaviours (values) of the CVF. This is good news, in that it means less ‘different things’ to remember!
Part Two: Guidance for Ethical and Professional Behaviour in Policing
Part Two of the Code of Ethics details lots of guidance on ethical and professional behaviour. As I mentioned, this is a very long section on the College’s site at 6,500 words. There’s a lot of scrolling involved to work your way through hundreds more bullet points. So this seems more of a nice to know and a deeper dive for those interested in reviewing further. When they have more time.
But what is all this guidance for? Here’s how the College explains its core purpose:
“The guidance will assist with building a positive workplace culture, by spelling out what good policing looks like, and by promoting professional conduct and decision making.”
And here’s how the College describe what the guidance contains:
“This guidance provides guidance on ethical and professional behaviour for everyone in policing. This is what the public has a right to expect from us, and what we should expect from ourselves and each other. It contains advice on areas of policing that are important to maintaining public trust and legitimacy, as well as additional guidance where experience tells us we could benefit from it, in order to help us do the right thing. It also signposts guidance that is contained elsewhere but not always easily located.”
So it’s a non-exhaustive list of things people in policing should do to behave professionally and ethically.
There’s much overlap again in the various statements with other College ‘bullet-point’ lists, like their Leadership Expectations. Many of them seem like common sense and a given. For example, here’s the first bullet point under a section called ‘Fairness and Respect’:
“Embrace diversity with acceptance and understanding, and actively challenge any discriminatory behaviour.”
If you’re interested to do a deep dive, I’ll leave you to peruse the list of guidance on the College’s website. If you just want to get the quick gist of what it’s talking about for now, here’s a bespoke word cloud summary of those 6,500 words:
“Decisions”, “understand”, and “support” feature prominently, which have clear congruence for promotion candidates with the CVF behaviours again. For example, ‘We Analyse Critically’, ‘We Take Ownership’ and ‘We Deliver, Support and Inspire’.
Part Three: Code of Practice for Ethical Policing
The Code of Ethics is supported by the Code of Practice for Ethical Policing. This is a statutory Code of Practice, which provides Chief Officers with direction on promoting and supporting ethical and professional behaviour within their forces. This part of the Code is again on a separate page of the College’s website. It is the only statutory part of the Code of Ethics and specifically relates to what Chief Officers must do.
While it applies to the most senior levels of forces, astute promotion candidates aspiring to the more strategic leadership positions of Chief Inspector and Superintendent might do well to take notice of this section too. For example, notice the language and change in tone/responsibility of some of the bullet points in this section:
- Ensuring that performance monitoring processes support public service provision and do not unintentionally incentivise inappropriate behaviour.
- Promoting a culture where recognition of success and areas for improvement are seen as learning opportunities.
- Encouraging a culture where staff feel empowered and encouraged to expect feedback or challenge when their behaviour, performance or service provision could be improved.
Here’s a visual summary to capture the essence of things, which you’ll notice is all about “ensuring” things are happening…
Why Did the College Change Things?
“Ethics reform is about restoring the public trust. When that is in doubt, nothing is more important than restoring it” – Ken Cuccinelli
You might be asking, “What on Earth was wrong with the 2014 Code of Ethics?” That’s a reasonable question, given how much simpler it was, easier to remember, and came as a neatly-packaged downloadable PDF you could print out and read over a coffee.
The College provides a somewhat unclear and/or unspecific rationale for this massive, costly sweeping change, worked on by formal Committees and many of its staff over three years. In a recent news announcement entitled ‘Why the Code of Ethics has Changed’, they allude to three main reasons for the change.
- First, they state that too many people perceived the 2014 Code as only applying to officers, not everyone in policing. It would be interesting to ask for more evidence around this, as it is difficult to believe that it was widely perceived within policing as ‘just for officers’. Further, it’s not made clear why such issues resulted in changing the entire code, rather than simply communicating that it did indeed apply to everyone in policing.
- The second main reason given is that they felt there was insufficient attention to organisational factors affecting ethical and professional behaviour in the 2014 Code.
- The third reason given was that the 2014 Code was wrongly being used as a guide for responding to allegations of misconduct. As with the first reason, it is not clear why this couldn’t be resolved with a simple, quick communique to Professional Standards Departments around the country (rather than the time and expense of changing the entire Code, which now has more bullet points which might be used by lawyers, PSD teams, and such in relation to misconduct allegations).
For the new 2024 Code of Ethics, the College are however keen to stress that last point, to avoid forces making the same mistake and referring to the Code when dealing with misconduct cases…
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Code of Ethics does not set the standards against which conduct should be assessed. Those standards are set by the Police Conduct Regulations and terms of employment.”
As for the name, ‘Code of Ethics’ was kept because it is familiar in policing. However, the College make clear that the 2024 Code of Ethics is not a statutory Code of Practice; it has the same status as other guidance produced by the College.
Finally, the College have actually listed on their detailed explainations where the 2014 Principles link and ‘map’ to the 2024 Principles. In effect, this means that pretty much every principle (except Selflessnes!) links to Courage, almost all again link to Public Service (except Fairness, which seems a pretty key Peelian Principle of public service), and over half link to Respect and Empathy. Some might argue this simply demonstrates nothing needed changing in the first place, or question the value of making the links. In any case, as a list it’s quite difficult to get your head around, so here’s how they visually map out if interested:
“Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler!” – Einstein (or not?)
I hope you’ve found this overview of the new Code of Ethics helpful. For info, I’ll soon be doing a more in-depth podcast for subscribers-only, with insights around including the Code in the context of your promotion evidence and examples.
Kind Regards, Steve
Want to go further right now? Hit the ground running with your promotion preparation. Get your personal digital promotion toolkit, and/or my Police Promotion Masterclass. You can also contact me to arrange personal coaching support.
Sad to say that all the evidence suggests that the statutory duty of candour is being ignored!