Our friends over at Graduate Fog have just brought our attention to this shocking and scandalous story from the Standard and the Telegraph:
As part of an overhaul of police recruitment – to save millions a year in training costs – Scotland Yard is considering making new recruits in London work as volunteer special constables for at least a year before they can apply to become full-time paid Met officers.
This saving of £12 million a year reveals the shocking state of our public finances. Who are the next generation of police officers? Only those who can afford to work for free for a year! Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
One thing is clear. This is a sign of things to come. If you want a job in the public sector APPLY NOW before this becomes the norm.
It’s one thing for small think-tanks or charities to employ unpaid interns… but for an organisation as big as the POLICE FORCE do away with paid training. We are lost for words.
This is a story which will rumble on and on and on. We haven’t heard the last of this one.
This is not as bad as it might seem- special constables don’t generally work full time (often only a few hours a week as they can), and it can be a very valuable insight into what they are getting themselves into before they join. Certainly it shouldn’t be the only form of police training, but people often learn much faster on the street than in the classroom. It’s not quite analogous to the admin/ campaigning/ coffee- making grind of exploitation we see in internships.
This has already happened! Pretty much every force has closed their recruitment for police officers. Guess what they haven’t closed recruitment for specials though. If you want to be a police officer better become a special and get paid nothing in the hope that you can transfer in from this position later. Just another hidden unpaid internship.