Professional Policing BA (Hons)

Programme Lead

Shaun Ostle

Shaun Ostle

My name is Shaun Ostle, I am the Programme Lead for Professional Policing. I have 30 years experience as a police officer with Nottinghamshire Police, and also academic experience teaching on policing degrees at another university. My policing career was varied spending time in neighborhood policing, response, roads policing, firearms and CID, but the majority was in various leadership roles. I have a ken interest in police mental health and wellbeing, and I am a qualified and experienced coach and mentor. My main aim is to see every student succeed in their studies and go on to become a police officer, or other practitioner in the criminal justice system.

*please note, there should be 2 other members of staff joining the team, however, they are still in recruitment phase

You can contact me if you have any questions about this course: s.ostle@staff.newman.ac.uk

Your first semester will be all about introducing you to the basics of policing. There are 3 modules in this semester, these are:

Policing Concepts & Study Skills: In this we will look at the history of policing in the UK, all of the different roles that make up a police service and also the other agencies that support the police. Alongside this, you will learn the skills that you will need to write successful assignments and will be given lots of support in this.

Diversity, Inclusion & Policing Communities: Everything the police do should be done ethically and with respect for every community. This is a really important module and will allow you to learn how you would effectively police communities and look at some aspects such as community engagement, policing diverse communities and developing community relations.

Criminology, Crime Prevention & Problem Solving: In this module, you will explore some of the basic criminology theory. It is better to prevent crime that to have to respond to it after it has taken place, so you will also look at crime prevention methods and problem-solving models. You will get the chance to put into practice problem-solving methodology in given situations.

Each of the modules has 3 hours taught time per week over a 12 week semester. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the teacher will be lecturing you for 3 hours! You will be given tasks and group exercises, occasionally we will have guest speakers and, of course, there will be plenty of breaks! It is important too that you know that you will be able to ask questions at any time if you don’t understand something and also time out of the lecture hours if you need it.

Mondays 14:00-17:00pm

Wednesdays 9:00am-12:00pm

Fridays 13:00am-16:00pm

Full details of your individual academic timetable will be available on mynewman after you have completed online enrolment and set up your student login.

No doubt you are keen to start looking at material that will help on your course. My advice would be to look at:

Handbook of Policing by Tim Newburn. This covers topics that we explore on the first 3 modules, such as policing history, community policing, amongst others.

College of Policing Code of Ethics, which sets out all of the standards required of anyone working in the police service in England & Wales.

There are 2 generic meetings for students to attend. They will be informal catch-ups to check if students have all of the information they need and answer any queries from them.

11am Tues 23rd August: Microsoft Teams link

11am Tues 6th September: Microsoft Teams link