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In most American police departments, a candidate for detective must have served as a uniformed officer for a period of one to five years before becoming qualified for the position. Prospective British police detectives must have completed two years as a uniformed officer before applying to join the Criminal Investigation Department. In European police systems, most detectives are university graduates who join directly from civilian life without first serving as uniformed officers. In fact, many European police experts cannot understand why British, American and Commonwealth police forces insist on recruiting their detectives from the ranks of uniformed officers, arguing that they do a completely different job and therefore require completely different training, qualifications, qualities and abilities. The opposing argument is that without previous service as a uniformed patrol officer a detective cannot have a great enough command of standard police procedures and problems and will find it difficult to work with uniformed colleagues.
Detectives obtain their position by competitive examination, covering such subjects as:
Private detectives are licensed by the state in which they live after passing a competitive examination and a criminal background check. Some states, such as Maryland, require a period of classroom training as well.
The detective bureau in most police departments is organized into several squads, each of which specializes in a type of investigation such as:
Detectives have a wide variety of techniques available in conducting investigations. However, the majority of cases are solved by interrogation of suspects and witnesses, which takes time. In a policeman's career as a uniformed officer and as a detective, a detective develops an intuitive sense of the plausibility of suspect and witness accounts. This intuition may fail at times, but usually is reliable.
Besides interrogations, detectives may rely on a network of informants he or she has cultivated over the years. Informants often have connections with persons a detective would not be able to approach formally.
In criminal investigations, once a detective has a suspect or suspects in mind, the next step is to produce evidence that will stand up in a court of law. The best way is to obtain a confession from the suspect, usually in exchange for a plea bargainA plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case where a prosecutor and a defendant arrange to end the case against the defendant. The defendant agrees to plead guilty or no contest (and often allocute) to the offense charged, or to a lesser offense, or for a lesser sentence. A detective may lie or otherwise mislead and may psychologically pressure a suspect into confessing, though in the United States a suspect may invoke his or her Miranda rights.