Police training institution
Valsts policijas koledža
Latvia’s police college, subordinate to the State Police, and a member of a consortium that deliberately did not become a university.
At a glance
- Official name
- Valsts policijas koledža
- Commonly rendered in English as
- State Police College — a rendering in common use, not necessarily the institution’s own name.
- System
- Latvia
- Who runs it
- Founded in 2006 by the Cabinet of Ministers as a higher education institution subordinate to the State Police. Valsts policija has a page of its own.
- Does it recruit officers?
- Not a recruiting authority
This institution trains. It does not decide who joins a police service. Applications to join are made to the service, not to the school.
- Does it award degrees?
- Not established
The sources read do not state whether this institution awards academic qualifications in its own right. Naming a bachelor or master programme is not the same as stating a degree-awarding status, so nothing is claimed here.
- Official website
- https://www.policijas.koledza.gov.lv/ — confirmed against the institution’s own pages on 17 September 2026.
- Facts last checked against sources
- 17 September 2026
What it is
The college began in 1991 as a training centre of the Interior Ministry’s Police Department, and in 2006 the Cabinet of Ministers founded it as a higher education institution subordinate to the State Police. In 2022 it entered a consortium with Rīga Stradiņš University, the University of Latvia and the Ministry of the Interior, establishing an Internal Security Academy. The college is careful about what that consortium is: a cooperation format sharing the resources and academic staff of three institutions, explicitly WITHOUT creating a new legal person. An arrangement that looks like a merger and is stated not to be one is worth recording precisely, because the difference decides which body awards what.
What kind of training it provides
Taken from the institution’s own account of what it does. A body can carry out several of these, and most do.
- Initial training — teaching that takes a person into the service
- In-service training — teaching for people already serving
- Academic education — teaching towards an academic qualification
Where to go next
- Does police training lead to a degree? — the comparative question across systems, which this page deliberately does not answer on its own.
- Official police recruitment destinations — where each system publishes its own joining information. That is where an application goes, not here.
- Police organisations — the named forces themselves, which are separate bodies from the institutions that train them.
Sources
Par mums — Valsts policijas koledža
Valsts policijas koledža · Government publication · link verified 2026-09-17
SCOPE: the Valsts policijas koledža only. The college's own 'about us' page in Latvian, read directly. Supports the official name, that it began work in 1991 as a training centre of the Interior Ministry's Police Department, and that in 2006 the Cabinet of Ministers founded it as a higher education institution subordinate to the State Police. Supports that in 2022 it entered a consortium agreement with Rīga Stradiņš University, the University of Latvia and the Ministry of the Interior establishing an Internal Security Academy, and — the part that matters — that the consortium is a cooperation format sharing resources WITHOUT creating a new legal person. The page is dated 14.08.2021 by its own publication stamp.