Staffing Composition in Large, US Police Departments: Benchmarking Workforce Diversity. Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 45(5): 707-726, 2022.
Purpose – Policymakers have long suggested diversifying US police forces, which typically have white male majorities among officers. This article explores to what extent police diversity has changed over time in large agencies, as well as whether different diversity benchmarks may matter for agencies.Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw data from the Law Enforcement Management andAdministrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey for 358 agencies that had at least 100 full-time sworn officers in 1997 and 2016 and that reported officer demographic data to…