205 The role of the Police Research Centre in strengthening criminalists’ competencies and securing society 205 The role of the Police Research Centre in strengthening criminalists’ competencies and securing society Davor Solomun Croatia Abstract The multidimensional expansion of security from the state towards the individual, human security and human rights significantly determines the contemporary social role of the police as a security institution. The adoption of the educational processes, with an accent on the need for multidimensional competencies of police professionals, actualises the question of the educational model and its compatibility with European or Croatian qualifications frameworks. The effort to change the paradigm of ‘research after learning’ to ‘learning through research’ tries to influence the creation of academic programmes, directing the focus and adjustment of the researchers, and improve the out- put competencies of criminalists. Development of the concept of integration of police practice and science-associated education content and research with practical participation in the police and criminal investigation procedure of security phenomena in real time. This paper analyses the need for the transformation of higher police education through model integration of police practice, theory and science. The aim is to argue the reasons for the development of the Police Research Centre within the Police College, resulting in the launch of the strategic programme for its development. Keywords: Police Research Centre; police practice and science. Introduction Modern-day security highlights concerns over human potential because of new insecurities, threats and dan- ger with, perhaps, increasing understanding by society overall of human values, and in particular human rights and freedom of citizens. The development of human resources to promote saf- er societies and national security is a particularly im- portant national issue for every educational, scientific and technological system. Reflecting the theoretical underpinning of the man- agement of resources in this field, it is clear that nation- al security is for the public good. It is therefore important to discuss human resource management in the public sector, especially police training. These resources, in the narrowest sense (Marčetić, 2007) are referred to as the totality of formal knowl- edge, practical skills, abilities, behaviours, social char- acteristics, psychological characteristics and other skills of public servants, as the most significant group of people in the public sector (on matters of public inter-