Police Staffing

Police agencies seeking to maintain their staffing levels often focus first on recruitment and retention of officers. A more critical initial question, however, is how many officers do they need? This guidebook provides a framework for understanding, conducting, and managing staffing studies using evidence-based and workload-driven approaches. Drawing on research and practical experience, this guidebook outlines key questions to consider in conducting staffing studies, including Ultimately, staffing studies are not one-time exercises but part of an organizational learning process that…

This guidebook provides insights into developing and maintaining police forces. Featuring input from both practitioners and policing scholars, its three sections discuss 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…

Law enforcement agencies continually seek to attract applicants but have little systematic guidance in conducting recruitment. The need for such guidance has become even more acute in recent years as they struggle with legitimacy issues and other sources of decreasing interest in the field. This work draws on research from multiple fields and interviews with 26 subject-matter experts from a variety of agencies to outline the elements of a successful recruitment program. At the organizational level, the analysis highlights the…

This work assesses 225 recruitment tactics that law enforcement agencies may use to attract candidates to their agencies. The authors review rankings of these tactics by 30 law enforcement practitioners on dimensions of staffing levels, workload management, timing of effects, ease of implementation, agency costs, quality of policing, and community policing outcomes. The analysis shows that no single recruitment tactic is universally optimal. Rather, effectiveness will depend on agency-specific circumstances and priorities. Tactics such as mentoring applicants, providing individualized guidance,…

This work reviews 49 tactics that police agencies may use to select personnel. More specifically, it reports on assessments that 30 practitioners gave to these tactics on dimensions of staffing levels, workload management, speed of impact, ease of implementation, cost of implementation, quality of police work, and effects on community policing. It finds the effectiveness of selection tactics will depend on agency-specific needs, constraints, and priorities. Agencies will need to consider tradeoffs in choosing particular tactics. For example, the review…

While recruitment tactics have received considerable attention from policing practitioners and scholars, retention tactics have not. This is unfortunate, because the cost to retain a police officer is much lower than that to recruit one. To overcome this gap, this research reviews 63 tactics, identified through a review of academic literature, practitioner reports, and media accounts, that police agencies may use to increase their retention of officers. More specifically, it presents rankings of these tactics by 30 law enforcement practitioners…

Police agencies face two related crises: police-community relations and staffing. While previous research has focused on how agencies may implement community-oriented policing through officers to improve police-community relations, it has not discussed how staffing tactics may help community-oriented policing. This research reviews both how staffing tactics can signal community-oriented policing to the community and how practitioners perceive the impact of these tactics on staffing levels, community-oriented policing, and other related dimensions. This work draws on a broader research project that…

Police staffing studies can provide common ground for understanding the services a police agency must provide, how to deliver them most efficiently and effectively, the expectations of elected and appointed leaders, and how to align service levels with available resources. This article outlines what a best-practice workload-based staffing study entails, the data it requires, and how law enforcement agencies and government finance professionals can use its results. Read More

We highlight how the practitioners rated 29 financial tactics for recruitment or retention. We view these through social exchange theory. Social exchange theory suggests that employees develop expectations of reciprocity in their relationship with employers, weighing the effort and risk they invest against the rewards, recognition, and support they receive. This may be particularly relevant for public safety settings, where the high-risk nature of the work can make perceptions of fairness, recognition, and organizational support especially consequential. Read More

To assist agencies in navigating multifaceted workforce challenges, the Police Staffing Observatory (PSO) applies a systems approach to staffing, seeking holistic, long-term, and meaningful impacts. This article provides an introduction to the PSO and how it serves as a trusted resource for the law enforcement community. Read More