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                            Library & Multimedia
 Recruiting and Retaining America's Finest: Evidence-Based Lessons for Police Workforce Planning
NCJ Number
              232276

Author(s)
          Jeremy M. Wilson;
                        Bernard D. Rostker;
                        Cha-Chi Fan
Date Published

2010
Length
              139 pages
Annotation
              The objective of this monograph is to formulate evidence-based lessons on recruitment, retention, and managing workforce profiles in large police departments. It extends the present literature on personnel planning by focusing on empirical analysis and by placing recruitment and retention in a larger context of managing the police workforce and its structure.
Abstract
              Results of the survey of current recruitment and retention practices, how they affected police recruitment and personnel profiles, and future research needs include: (1) police compensation, city size, and crime rates had statistically significant effects on police recruiting; (2) advertising and recruiting incentives had little effect on the number of recruits; (3) cohort sizes and structures highlighted current and future personnel management challenges; and (4) ongoing national data collection to facilitate comparative and longitudinal analyses of police staffing. A critical but often times neglected function of police organizations is management of the sworn officer force. Police organizations receive little empirical guidance on how best to build and maintain their workforce. This work, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, sought to fill the gap of information on practices available to police agencies through a survey of police agencies on their recruitment and retention practices and how they can affect the profile of officers at differing ranks of services. The survey was sent to every United States policy agency with at least 300 sworn officers, and sought to document such characteristics as authorized and actual strength by rank, officer work and qualifications, compensation, and recruiting efforts. The data provided an overview of current recruitment and retention practices, how they affected police personnel profiles, and to identify future research needs. Tables, figures, appendixes, and references
      
  
          Additional Details
Grant Number(s)
        2006-DD-BX-0025


  
  
        
  Agencies
        NIJ-Sponsored


  
  
        
  Publication Type
        Report (Study/Research)


  
  
        
  Award
        Center for Quality Policing (CQP)
    
  
  
Date Published: January 1, 2010
    
          Downloads
        
                      PDF

Related Datasets
        
                      http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR29162.v1
                  http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR29742.v1
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