Research

It is often difficult for law enforcement workforce planners to systematically address allocation, recruitment, training, and retention to effectively address staffing challenges. Taking up these broaderdiscussions of police workload and how best to manage it, however, enables certain key questions to be posed, including the following:• How does an agency know when it is understaffed?• How does an agency address the effects of understaffing?• What can be done to build better workforces?• Are there solutions other than staffing for managing…

This PSO Perspective summarizes lessons from our research, Dimensions of a Police Recruitment Program, appearing in Policing: An International Journal, 2025. It identifies the key elements of police recruitment programs, supporting a more systematic approach to recruitment by reviewing academic and practitioner literature from 2010 to 2024 and conducting interviews with 26 subject-mater experts. Read More

This study identifies key features of police recruitment programs, enabling a more systematic approach to recruitment. We reviewed academic and practitioner literature from 2010 to 2024 and interviewed 26 subject-matter experts to build a taxonomy of recruitment programs with dimensions and elements that target different levels within a police organization. At the organizational level, recruitment programs need supportive leadership, a healthy organizational culture, budgeted resources, and diverse goals. At the unit level, they need strategies to expedite processes, metrics to…

Although there is considerable research on conservation-oriented crime and policing in other protected spaces, research on national parks remains scarce. This work examines law enforcement in the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). Using a mixed-methods case study approach, this research draws on administrative and interview data regarding NPS law enforcement and calls for service as well as law enforcement ranger duties. The number of law enforcement rangers has decreased in the past 2 decades, while the number of park visitors has…

Police agencies may employ a variety of tactics to improve their recruitment processes, with the primary goal of increasing their number of officers. Yet, as this PSO Perspective discusses, tactics perform differently within and across a variety of dimensions—some supporting other agency goals, but some not doing so. In selecting tactics, agencies should be mindful of these multiple effects, and choose those likely to produce the combination of effects they most desire. Read More

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the multifaceted nature of police staffing issues and presentinnovative solutions that can be adapted globally and locally. By bringing togetherleading researchers and practitioners, this edition seeks to provide evidence-basedinsights and strategies to help police departments navigate the current staffing landscapeeffectively. Read More

This PSO Perspective summarizes and extends lessons from our research, “Reframing the Police Staffing Challenge: A Systems Approach to Workforce Planning and Managing Workload Demand,” appearing in Vol. 18 of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. It highlights the advantages and disadvantages of referring to the current police staffing situation as a crisis, and how, by instead considering it a dynamic challenge, a systems approach offers evidence-based guidance for addressing it. Read More

The purpose of this special issue, The Police Staffing Crisis: Evidence-Based Approaches for Building, Balancing and Optimizing Effective Workforces, is to help unpack the dynamic staffing challenge, examine many of its component parts, and offer lessons to advance the science and practice of police workforce planning. It features work by global, thought-leading researchers and practitioners, many of whom collaborate on research and outreach as part of the Michigan State University Police Staffing Observatory (https://cj.msu. edu/research-excellence/pso/pso-home.html). While each of the 15…

Police agencies face myriad staffing challenges. Among these are changing preferences for police work, training officers for increasingly complex environments, diversifying police workforces to reflect the communities they serve, and ensuring officer wellness. Perhaps the most pressing of these, as reported by agencies themselves, is the need to maintain force levels by balancing recruitment and retention. Citing decreasing numbers of applicants and increasing numbers of retirements or other departures from the field, many police agencies report being understaffed. This, in…