Human rights in the new training curriculum of the Police Service of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is attempting to move from a divided society model of policing to a democratic policing model. One of the key components of the reform agenda is the issue of human rights. A key test of the attempt to place human rights at the forefront of the reforms is the attempt to integrate human rights into every aspect of police training. In this article, the new training curriculum of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is examined to determine whether and how human rights are being integrated into the training modules in an effort to better understand the dimensions of democratic police reforms. Field observations of training sessions indicate that a holistic approach to human rights is being employed in addition to a legalistic approach.