The University of Cambridge has announced plans to work with Sir Ian Blair, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to provide training for senior police executives in India.

Beginning later in 2010, the three-year scheme will offer mid-career tuition to 420 police executives, according to an agreement signed on March 11th between the University's Institute of Criminology and the National Police Academy of India.

The eight-week courses will be made available for the use of the elite Indian Police Service. Responsible for some two million of the country's police staff, its 3500 members comprise the highest tier of policing in India.

Trainees on the Programme will work in groups of 140, spending six weeks in India before traveling to Cambridge for the final fortnight.

Sir Ian Blair will be putting his experience as former Scotland Yard Police Commissioner to use in his role as Co-Director of the programme. He will be joined by fellow Co-Director Lawrence Sherman, the Wolfson Professor of Criminology at Cambridge.

The Programme centers on the application of scientific and academic study to real-life policing. Professor Lawrence describes it as focusing on “policing for results, based on the best evidence on how to achieve best results in any social context.”

The University's Institute of Criminology beat out competition from universities based in the UK, US, Australia, and even India itself to win the £2.4 million contract with the Indian Government.

The Institute's Police Executive Programme has been running since its introduction in 1995 by then-Directory Sir Anthony Bottoms. For over a decade, it offered both a Master’s degree and Diploma in Applied Criminology and Police Management, forming an advanced section of Bramshill Police College’s Senior Command Course (SCC).

The Institute educated almost 300 senior police in that time, of whom more than 30 became chief constables.

Since the SCC was scaled back in 2005, the Programme’s scope has become increasingly international. It currently enrols over 80 police chiefs annually from around the world. The project with India is the latest stage in the scheme’s ever more global significance.

Speaking at the contract’s signing, Professor Sherman predicted that the agreement will “lead to increasing recognition of the great complexity of policing, placing the knowledge base supporting the profession on a par with medicine or engineering.”

Cambridge will share the contract with its Indian partner, the newly-established OP Jindahl Global University of Sinipat.