Our History

The National Police College of Jamaica is the focal point of education, training and career development in Jamaican Law Enforcement. As a key asset of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the College offers a wide range of programmes, from entry to degree levels, as well as specialised courses for serving members and is the institution of choice for police forces across the Caribbean.

With a history as old as the JCF itself, the NPCJ can trace its early beginnings as far back as to the turn of the 18^th Century when night watchmen were trained in 1716 to serve the cities of Port Royal, Kingston, and the parishes of Saint Catherine and Saint Andrew.

With the formal establishment of the Jamaica Constabulary Force in 1867 in a milieu defined by the violent Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, a Central Depot was soon set up at Spanish Town in the Old Imperial Barracks to train new recruits.

By 1911, the training depot was removed to Elletson Road in Kingston and would later be re-organised by Superintendent W.A. Calver of the London Metropolitan Police into a training school on the same premises in the mould of the famed Police Training School at Hendon in the UK.

In 1967 the training school was transferred to the old military barracks in Port Royal with 106 trainees and 18 instructors under the supervision of Superintendent Paul Miller, who deemed the move as a response to the “too many diversions” that interfered with the training operations. Port Royal on the other hand was secluded and considered an ideal location for police training under close supervision.

However, the Police Training School would return to the old national capital in 1982 under the guidance of the then Commissioner, Bill Bowes, and would be renamed the Jamaica Police Academy on over 300 acres of land at Twickenham Park, which had accommodated the Jamaica School of Agriculture.