Fancy an unpaid job? One in which you could be verbally abused on a routine basis and face the risk of being beaten up or even killed?

If so, you are the sort of person being targeted by 10 police forces around Britain hoping to recruit more special constables.

The BBC's Jonathan Hallewell quizzes Home Office Minister Alun Michael on the 'specials' (3'01")

Those forces taking part in the recruitment campaign are Cumbria, Cleveland, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Surrey. Others, though, are taking advantage of the publicity to increase numbers.

Policing on the cheap?

There are about 20,000 such volunteers in England and Wales at the moment, compared to about 15,000 ten years ago. The rise in their numbers, however, is not seen by everyone as a good thing.

The Police Federation, for example, accuses the government of using special constables to obtain "policing on the cheap". It points to Derbyshire, where nearly a fifth of all officers in 1996 were specials.

The Home Office denies this, arguing that "specials" bring to the job experience gained outside policing which regular officers do not have.

The new campaign is based on similar cross-fertilisation. It is aimed at convincing employers that their employees will benefit from the experience of being police officers and therefore become more effective at work.

The Police Federation is also critical of such recruitment campaigns and argues that the money would be better spent on finding full-time officers. It points out that the last drive to recruit specials in 1996 cost £2m and resulted in a net gain of precisely six constables - 4,525 joined during the campaign but 4,519 left.

On the other hand, it is possible that without the publicity drive, there might have been a big net loss of officers.

What are special constables?

"Specials" are volunteers who serve as police officers in their own time. Such service has a long tradition in Britain. Appointing extra forces of law and order goes back to the 17th century and in 1831 Parliament passed laws allowing Justices of the Peace to appoint specials to combat widespread lawlessness.

The modern era of special constables dates back to 1914, when more than 100,000 were recruited to support the regular forces during the First World War.

Specials are unpaid though can claim meal and travel expenses. They are encouraged to serve for a minimum of four hours a week though most do far more - some are on duty for up to 20 hours a week.

Special constables have the same powers of arrest as professional officers and in theory can do anything that a regular officer can do. In recent years they have moved away from "fetes and fairs" duty to more general policing, but in practice they rarely take part in specialist work such as firearms.

They do not face such stringent physical requirements as professional officers but have to be fit.

"To the same standard"

In principle, they are trained "to the same standard" as professionals but the training is carried out over a longer period of time. Initial training is usually carried out at weekends - in London, it is for eight hours a week over 18 weeks.

After that, training is "on the job" and because special constables are only part-time, it can take a long time to bring them up to the standard of regular officers.

This becomes a problem given that there is a high rate of turnover. The Home Office says the average length of service is four to five years, which it describes as good for the voluntary sector.

However, some critics say that specials are only at professional standard for a year or two before leaving, which means that most of the money spent on their training is wasted. On the other hand, many specials leave to become full-time officers, which means they already have valuable policing experience.
 

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