How Police Recruitment Strategies Impact Department Diversity and Community Ties

• In Event: The Role of Public Servants

Abstract

Police recruitment and retention is an increasing concern for departments and cities across the country. At the same time that the public has called for greater accountability and reform, the human resources necessary to do police work are becoming scarcer. Attempts to be responsive to public demands for reform, diversify police departments, and create stronger community relationships are threatened by low recruitment numbers and historically small cadet classes. Using Knoxville, TN as a case, we conduct an original survey of police officers combined with an event history analysis of the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) human resources data to investigate recruitment and retention as both an administrative and political challenge. Partly in response to national trends, the KPD adopted a recruitment strategy focused on attracting officers from the national labor market. We first test if departmental diversity goals are actually served by the strategy. Next, we investigate a potential unintended consequence of the strategy, that the department is less connected to the community it serves. We test whether job satisfaction, ties to the community, and public service values differ between officers recruited from Knox and adjacent counties compared to officers recruited from the national labor market. The findings from this study will benefit both the KPD and provide an important insight on the direct and indirect consequences of police departments’ administrative strategies.

Authors

• Jonathan Ring, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• Orion Vllasi