This guidebook provides insights into developing and maintaining police forces. Featuring input from both practitioners and policing scholars, its three sections discuss
- The current nature of the police staffing experience as characterized by state associations of law enforcement practitioners. This includes examples from specific departments as well as discussion of efforts to improve staffing processes.
- Briefs on key staffing issues, including
- Recruitment
- Promotions
- Turnover and retention
- Workforce environment
- Workforce planning.
- More extensive discussions on
- Inexpensive staffing tactics for police staffing challenges
- Strategies for speeding up the hiring process
- Community policing solutions to police staffing challenges
- Leadership as a morale engine in small and medium-size police agencies
- Improving police service provision through proper span of control and first-line supervision
- Building a modern public safety workforce by integrating professional (civilian) staff
- Understanding police staffing issues through online reviews.
A key lesson of this work is that the most effective response to the police staffing challenge involves addressing all its multiple dimensions. Creating meaningful and long-lasting impact to workforce levels will demand careful attention to recruitment, promotions, turnover and retention, workforce environment, and workforce planning. The guide also underscores the value that academic research and collaboration can bring to policing. Combining insights from research and practice, this guide provides evidence-based guidance to critical areas affecting police staffing.
