Malta’s Police Academy Overhaul: From 5-Week Crash Course to Year-Long Degree in Community Trust

From five weeks to a year: police training overhauled
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The parade-ground bark that once echoed for barely a month at the Malta Police Academy in Ħal Far is being replaced by a full 12-month syllabus that includes de-escalation drills in Valletta’s tight baroque alleys, cyber-crime simulations at the SmartCity hub, and 80 hours of Maltese sign-language immersion.

Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri calls it “the biggest shake-up since 1814, when the British left us a constabulary instead of a police force”. Officers who previously graduated after five classroom weeks and two on-road “shadowing” days will now spend 48 weeks in training and 14 on supervised beat work before they are allowed to file their first solitary charge sheet.

The reform lands at a time when the force is nursing a bruised reputation: a Europol report last year ranked Malta second in the EU for citizens’ perception of police corruption, while local surveys show trust at 42 %—well below the EU average of 68 %. A summer of viral videos—one showing an officer allegedly pocketing cash at a Marsa traffic stop, another capturing heavy-handed arrests outside Paceville clubs—pushed the government to act.

Inside the academy, the change is already visible. Where recruits once memorised traffic codes from photocopied handouts, they now sit in mock courtrooms built with €1.2 million EU funds, grilled by real magistrates on how to testify without perjuring themselves. A replica village square—complete with a pastizzeria façade and a makeshift festa statue—lets trainees practise crowd control for the village feasts that triple police workload every summer weekend.

Cultural nuance is no longer an afterthought. Lectures by anthropologist Dr Maria Pace explain why interrupting a grieving family’s *ħabbata* (door-knocking ritual) can ignite entire neighbourhoods. Officers learn that “*Ejja, ħi*” can defuse tension faster than formal commands, and that in Gozo the word *pulizija* still carries echoes of 19th-century grain-tax collectors.

Community impact is being measured in real time. In a pilot last February, 30 “long-course” constables walked the beat in Birżebbuġa, where construction-site thefts had jumped 35 %. After six months, burglaries fell 22 % and, more tellingly, anonymous crime-reporting—via the 119 WhatsApp line—rose 40 %. Mayor Joseph Farrugia admits he was sceptical: “Youngsters used to see police as either clowns or aliens. Now they’re asking selfies with the same officers who once chased them off skateboards.”

Not everyone is applauding. The Police Officers’ Union warns that the 180 recruits needed annually to keep the reform afloat will cost €9 million extra per year, at a time when overtime bills already exceed €20 million. Veteran constables who joined at 18 with five O-levels fear being leap-frogged by 23-year-old graduates waving criminology degrees. “Experience counts,” insists union head Sandro Grech. “You can’t learn the smell of a hashish stash from PowerPoint.”

Meanwhile, Paceville stakeholders worry the new syllabus’s 40-hour module on sexual-consent law could thin an already overstretched weekend presence. “One officer spent 45 minutes taking a statement from a British tourist who couldn’t remember whether she’d said yes or no,” one club manager complained on Facebook. “Great for victims, but who’s watching the door for the next fight?”

Women’s rights NGOs counter that the extra training is overdue. “For years victims were told, ‘Don’t ruin the boy’s future,’” says Marceline Naudi of the Women’s Rights Foundation. “Now recruits role-play believability tests with actors playing drunk teenagers. That shifts culture faster than any slogan.”

The real test starts next September, when the first fully-trained cohort—120 strong—graduates and spreads across the islands. Their uniforms look the same, but inside the breast pocket each will carry a fold-out card: one side listing emergency numbers in English, Maltese and Arabic; the other bearing a quote from St Thomas Aquinas: “Law is nothing unless it’s lived by the people who guard it.”

Whether Malta’s guardians can live up to a year of schooling—or sink back into old habits—will determine not just clearance rates, but whether village band clubs let them march at the front of next summer’s festa processions. For a nation where politics is tribal and trust is hard-won, that invitation matters more than any Europol bar chart.