Police Workforce Structures

Abstract

Research has long focused on the size of police agencies, giving little attention to the composition of the workforce itself. Literature in fields such as the military, healthcare, organizational psychology, and business, highlights the importance of workforce structures in meeting both organizational and staff needs. Using data from a national survey, we examine personnel cohorts (i.e., distribution of junior, midlevel, and senior sworn staff) as an element of workforce structure in the largest, U.S. municipal police organizations. We describe the importance of cohort structures for enhancing performance (meeting both organizational and individual needs) and assess variation in cohort structures. We discuss the cohorts in light of their effects on personnel management, and highlight the importance of existing cohort structures when considering major personnel decisions such as hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and buyouts. We summarize future research that could advance theory and policy regarding workforce structures in police and other criminal justice organizations.

Keywords

staffing personnel recruitment cohorts economy

Introduction

Maintaining workforce levels (i.e., sworn strength or size) is a continuing challenge for police organizations. Consider the recent appropriation of US$1 billion to the federal Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS), for the COPS Hiring Recovery Program to help stabilize law enforcement positions. In all, the COPS Office received a staggering 7,272 applications requesting over $8 billion to support nearly 40,000 sworn officer positions throughout the United States (Community-Oriented Policing Services Office, 2009). Clearly, many U.S. police organizations today face a considerable demand for officers but often struggle to meet it.

Meeting workforce needs solely in terms of size, however, is but one challenge of managing police personnel. There is also the larger goal of determining, developing and maintaining the workforce structure. Although there is no single workforce structure that is ideal for all departments, a more balanced structure, for instance, might have proportionate cohorts of junior, midcareer, and senior officers. Over time this would provide officers predictable career progression and for the organization a consistent rank and experience profile across all levels of the department. The recent recession, however, has lead to a variety of staffing decisions that affect both workforce level and structure. For example, resource shortfalls leading to furloughs, layoffs or hiring freezes might create or exacerbate a staffing deficit as well as alter the current cohort structure.

In this article, we focus on the latter issue. We argue that staffing decisions affect police personnel management because of their long-term effects on departments as officer cohorts move through the organization over time. Specifically, we suggest that the lasting effect of any staffing decisions likely depends on the current cohort structure and the type of personnel loss, suggesting that these factors should be considered in tandem—especially in this time of increasing reductions. We attempt to introduce this lesson empirically using data from a recent national survey of police staffing conducted by the RAND. Below, however, we first provide the conceptual framework for our analyses. We review research in other fields to suggest that workforce balance is critical to meeting the needs of both organizations and personnel. We also discuss how the weakened economy has made it difficult for police agencies to maintain their current structure. We conclude by discussing the implications of cohort structures for administering police and other large criminal justice organizations and how future research can further advance theory, practice, and policy.

What is Workforce Structure?

Workforce level and workforce structure are distinct staffing concepts that have different implications for personnel planning. Workforce level refers to “police strength,” in which recruitment and retention are tools to manage the size of the sworn-officer force to avoid staffing shortages. By contrast, workforce structure refers to the distribution of personnel, or cohort structure, in which recruitment and retention are tools to manage the movement of officers through an organization.

There is unlikely a single workforce structure that would be considered ideal by all agencies. However, we suggest a more efficient structure would facilitate steady cohort progression, allowing the department to continually fill the ranks with officers who have the proper skills and experience at each grade. We consider this, in general, a “balanced” workforce structure. In this regard, balance does not mean that the proportions of junior, midcareer and senior cohorts are equal but, rather, that each cohort is proportionally smaller than the previous one (i.e., greater junior personnel and progressively fewer senior personnel). Thus, balance refers to a distribution of personnel that provides a consistent and efficient rank and experience profile, not equal numbers. Much of the discussion and examples throughout this article pertain to achieving and maintaining workforce “balance” as described here, but the lessons about the importance of managing cohorts are general and applicable for organizations that desire different workforce structures.

Workforce Structure Affects Organizations and Personnel

Workforce structure is important because it affects career progression—which can affect officers and the departments they serve. For officers, career progression determines the jobs they can perform and the compensation for them. If officers progress too quickly, they may not possess the experience or skills needed to do the work they are promoted to do. If officers progress too slowly, however, they could become frustrated and less satisfied with police work, resulting in them leaving the department or even the career. For departments, officer progression determines the experience level at various ranks, which has implications for service quality, field training, supervision, and personnel costs. Below, we review research in policing and other fields on experience/skill mixes and career plateaus to support these ideas.

Workforce Structure Affects Organizations

The idea of managing workforce structure is not new and has received some attention in early military personnel studies (for a full review, see Rostker, 2006). Grissmer and Rostker (1992, p. 131), for instance, pointed out that military staffing cuts in the early 1990s were made with consideration to maintaining an efficient experience profile over time. Hosek, Fernandez, and Grissmer (1986, p. 201) commented that, without policy change, the all-volunteer force would be senior-heavy by the end of the 1980s, raising important questions about managing such a force (e.g., how to sustain it or how to restructure it if this profile is undesirable). Finally, Cooper (1977) discussed managing the years-of-service profile in the postdraft era. Because greater costs would be incurred from first-term personnel in an all-volunteer force, it was necessary to explore productivity and costs of alternative experience mixes (i.e., the proportion of first-term/career personnel). Cooper (1977, p. 319) concluded that the military was junior-heavy but did not emphasize building a “career-intensive force,” which ultimately could disrupt accession patterns and the flow of quality personnel through the ranks.

Cooper’s (1977) work, in particular, shows how workforce structures can affect organizations via the experience profile. Specifically, it highlights two outcomes that are important to any organization: productivity and cost-effectiveness. According to Cooper (1977), the problem is not that junior personnel are incompetent, but that having too many requires using them to perform jobs better suited for more experienced personnel, resulting in a loss of productivity and cost-effectiveness. Other military personnel studies (which included data on civilian personnel) also show the importance of experience to organizations. For example, Quinones, Ford, and Teachout (1995) found a positive relationship between work experience and job performance (no matter how experience was measured); and Schmidt, Hunter, and Outerbridge (1986) found the same relationship indirectly through job knowledge.

Individually and collectively, these landmark works raised attention to understanding the military’s workforce structure, spurring over the 1980s and early 1990s the larger paradigm shift in managing the all-volunteer force (Rostker, 2006). Prior to this time, less attention was paid to how staffing decisions affected the military’s personnel profile, and the implications of the resulting profile for planning and developing an effective force. Instead, “success” in planning the all-volunteer force was viewed more limitedly in terms of the “rising or falling” in the number of recruits (Rostker, 2006, p. 639), which is more narrowly an issue of managing workforce size.

This work on experience profiles touches on a related concept that is also important to organizations—the “skill mix.” Merging several definitions, skill mix refers broadly to the combination of roles or skills needed throughout an organization to achieve an agreed standard of performance (Buchan & Calman, 2005; Buchan & Dal Poz, 2002; Cahill, 1995). Just like experience profiles, workforce structure may affect skill mix management. Workforce balance enables personnel to ascend gradually within an organization to more-senior positions, in which they would continually develop the skill set necessary to succeed at the next grade. However, when workforce imbalance impedes steady career progression, organizations may be forced to task higher-graded positions with less qualified or skilled staff, or even ask senior personnel to fill lower positions. As discussed below, research in healthcare demonstrates the consequences of ineffective skill mix management.

Some health care managers believe that skill mix changes in nursing could compromise the quality of patient care (Adams, Lugsden, Chase, Arber, & Bond, 2000). Related, the quality of care appears to suffer when higher-graded (i.e., more skilled) nurses worked in combination with lower-graded (i.e., less-skilled) nurses, demonstrating the consequences of mismatching skill mixes (Carr-Hill et al., 1992). In fact, some adverse patient outcomes are less likely (e.g., medication errors and patient complaints) when the nursing skill mix is not mismatched, or there is a higher proportion of registered nurses (Blegen, Goode, & Reed, 1998). A recent literature review also found that changing skill mixes in response to staff shortages is viewed by some as “highly contentious” and a form of “skill dilution” that can affect nurse performance (see Currie, Harvey, West, McKenna, & Keeney, 2005, p. 78). Nevertheless, another literature review concluded that the effect of substituting qualified nurses for unqualified health care assistants is mixed (Crossnan & Ferguson, 2005), but some of the studies found differences in the quality of care delivered by qualified versus unqualified staff (see Davies, 1992).

Admittedly, the lessons from healthcare are less direct for police organizations because these studies discuss the consequences of mixing differently qualified and educated personnel (e.g., registered nurses versus health care assistants) whereas all police officers are generally equivalently certified and trained (though some variation may exist with regard to education). However, the general lesson regarding workforce structure and police organizations is that similar issues could result when officers who lack tenure and experience are assigned to higher-graded positions alongside other more-senior personnel.

These lessons of workforce structure, experience profiles and skills mixes are drawn from military and healthcare research because they have not yet been explored in the policing field. However, recent media accounts and legislative testimony (not to mention numerous anecdotal accounts) suggest that they are relevant to law enforcement. For example, on the cusp of a deferred retirement program, the Los Angeles Police Department became concerned with the impending “exodus” of veteran officers (e.g., deputy chiefs, detectives, investigators), with budget shortages exacerbating the problem by limiting hiring to fill the vacancies (McGreevy, 2006). In Washington, DC, the police chief cited concerns over an expected surge in retirements coupled with stalled recruitment because of lacking funds (Associated Press, 2011). Of major concern was the shrinking size of the sworn-officer force, but equally important was the potential “void of experience” within the department. Similarly, upcoming retirements of senior personnel in the Sacramento Police Department will allow for overdue promotions of younger, talented officers but also leave the organization, according to the chief, “teetering on a crisis in leadership” given the loss of experience (Minugh, 2011). In March 2012, the Senate Law and Justice and House Judiciary Committees of the Pennsylvania State Legislature held a joint hearing to specifically address trooper levels in the State (Senate Law and Justice, 2012). The testimony centered on the low trooper complement, the expected loss of a substantial proportion of the force because of retirement eligible troopers, and the management and service delivery problems this would create as a result of not just too few troopers but an inefficient workforce distribution. Furthermore, discussion centered on how holding few, large “bubble” classes of cadets could exacerbate difficulties arising from inefficient cohort planning immediately and into the future. In sum, researchers have not directly explored the affect of workforce structure on police organizations but it is clear that practitioners understand the implications and potential issues, which are similar to those discussed in the military and healthcare literatures.

Workforce Structure Affects Personnel

We have explained how workforce structure can affect career progression, which may adversely affect organizations. However, this may also have consequences for personnel via career plateaus. There are several definitions but, in general, plateaued personnel have little prospect of increased responsibility and promotion (Feldman & Weitz, 1988; Ference, Stoner, & Warren, 1977), and are unable to “move up hierarchically” within their organization (Allen, Poteet, & Russell, 1998, p. 160).

The way in which workforce structure could create plateaus is relatively straightforward. In a senior-heavy organization, for instance, midcareer personnel would have few options for promotion until older staff retired and “freed up” their positions (Flynn, 2010, p. 379). Arguably, the movement of junior personnel to midlevel positions would then also be stalled. Having a large junior cohort would create intense competition for these positions. The few who successfully obtain them would likely stay in these positions for extended periods of time, limiting advancement opportunities of the larger cohort far into the future. Consequently, entire cohorts of personnel could be “trapped” in their current grade or job assignment even though they may be qualified for promotion. This is similar to an “organizational” plateau in which qualified personnel can no longer advance because potential promotions become fewer as they climb the organizational hierarchy (Burke & Mikkelson, 2006), but this plateau is a “natural” consequence of the pyramidal structure of organizations and more restricted to senior personnel.

Some research shows that career plateaus have adverse effects on police officers, specifically. Rostker, Hix, and Wilson (2007) found that quality officers become frustrated and often resign once they perceive their career progression stalled (for evidence of this phenomenon with military and federal government personnel, see Black, Moffitt, & Warner, 1990; Gotz & McCall, 1984). In Norway, compared to nonplateaued officers, plateaued officers (those with 15 years of experience who had not been promoted) reported experiencing less job clarity, a negative work environment, less job satisfaction and greater turnover (Burke & Mikkelson, 2006). Burke (1989) found similar results for plateaued and nonplateaued officers in Canada. Finally, human resource managers reported how for the London Metropolitan Police Service mandatory retirement policies represent a “double-edged sword” for personnel planning (see Flynn, 2010). Increasing the retirement age retains for the organization the experience and skills of longtime officers but, as a consequence, “older officers could block career paths of younger colleagues” (Flynn, 2010, p. 385).

Research in other career fields is consistent with these findings. First, although career plateauing did not influence turnover intentions among engineers in China, it negatively affected career and job satisfaction (Lee, 2003). Second, state government managers considered to be “double-plateaued” (i.e., those plateaued on job content and hierarchical movement) had less job satisfaction and organizational commitment compared to other types of plateaus and were more likely to have turnover intentions. Third, Jiang and Klein (1999) found a positive relationship between career satisfaction and internal career paths, emphasizing the importance of organizations providing “some promise of advance” (p. 237). Fourth, satisfaction with promotion opportunities had a direct positive effect on satisfaction among supervisor- and staff-level internal auditors, but also indirect negative effect on turnover intentions. Finally, interviews with managers from various professions (e.g., bank officers, office managers, school administrators) revealed that nonplateaued managers were in better health, less likely to miss work and viewed their supervisors more favorably (Near, 1984). Being satisfied with your “boss” is important to personnel but it may also affect the organization through retention, as some contend that “people don’t quite jobs, they quit bosses” (see Orrick’s comments in Wilson & Grammich, 2009, p. 19).

Career plateaus have other adverse consequences for the organization at large. Individuals unable to follow a healthy career progression stunt organizational growth which, after becoming entrenched in organizations, contribute to a vicious cycle resistant to change and leading to the decay of an organization’s knowledge base and eventual organizational decline (Masuch, 1985). Specifically, they may develop feelings of career entrenchment, wherein states of desperation and loss may reduce motivation for career growth and constructive personal improvement (Carson & Carson, 1997). These individuals may pose a greater risk to organizational health in careers where such attitudes are allowed to develop in clustered situations such as work groups and networks (Masuch, 1985). By allowing such inertia to perpetuate, the organization is subjected to potentially damaging internal conflict where the lack of progress becomes persistent. The dual phenomena of organizational forgetting and organizational stagnation have been described by management scientists as conditions wherein organizations can languish in a state of resistance to learning and growth over time. Organizational forgetting (Martin de Holan & Phillips, 2004; Tsang & Zahra, 2008) is often an involuntary process brought about by the cumulative effects of a reduction in the learning processes of an organization’s members, leading to the erosion of the organization’s long-term memory and reducing the ability of the organization to respond to novel challenges and meet rapidly changing needs. Management science has long debated the merits of this process, indicating that at times organizational forgetting plays a crucial role in organizational growth if the discarded knowledge base is summarily replaced by new modes of learning, and organizational memory is reinvigorated by new approaches, strategies, and methods of performance (Tsang & Zahra, 2008). However, if this process of substitution does not occur and the organization’s members are left with no opportunities to replace existing modes of behavior with new ones, organizational forgetting may lead to the deterioration and decay of organizational knowledge. This state may in turn result in organizational stagnation, a self-perpetuating transformation of the organization wherein these conditions are amplified and mirrored throughout multiple organizational levels (Carson & Carson, 1997; Masuch, 1985).

Altogether, the studies above support Lee’s (2003, p. 548) conclusion that the “career plateau is not an outdated concept” making it critical for organizations to “take care of their employees’ career.” One way in which organizations can do this is to maintain an optimal rate of personnel progression by managing cohorts properly. By doing so, the organization can avoid creating career plateaus and therefore better meet the work needs of individuals, including job satisfaction, promotion opportunities and satisfaction with supervisors, and likewise reduce attrition and better improve the knowledge and performance of the larger organization.

The Recession has Exacerbated Police Workforce Planning

Above, we discussed the effect of workforce structure based on the organizations’ ability to manage cohorts, but there are external forces that intensify this challenge—namely, the economy. Police staffing cuts resulting from the recent recession (e.g., layoffs, furloughs, hiring freezes) have occurred in a number of departments across the United States ranging in size, geography and organizations (for a full review, see COPS, 2011). In fact, a 2008 survey conducted by Police Executive Research Forum (PERF; Fischer, 2009) revealed that 63% of responding agencies were preparing plans for funding cuts, with 31% of the cuts aimed at funding for sworn personnel, even after many of the agencies already made cuts to staffing via overtime reductions (62%), sworn officer and civilian hiring freezes (27% and 53%, respectively), diminishing recruit classes (34%), reducing employment levels through attrition (24%), furloughs (10%) and layoffs, and forced retirements (7%). A follow-up survey in 2010 revealed “More than half of the responding police organizations suffered cuts in their total funding in the 2010 fiscal year. . . [and] 59 percent of those organizations are preparing to cut their budgets again in 2011” (Police Executive Research Forum, 2010, p. iii).

Staffing cuts resulting from the recession can pose immediate and future personnel management challenges for both workforce levels and structure. For example, a major layoff would immediately disrupt an agency’s workforce level. Years later, however, after the economy improves, the department might replenish staff by hiring a wave of new recruits (for discussions about the Oakland, California, Police Department’s hiring freeze-hiring boom-layoff cycle, see Kuruvila, 2010; Wilson & Cox, 2008; Wilson, Cox, Smith, Bos, & Fain, 2007). Although the department would again (presumably) be properly staffed in terms of size, uneven cohorts resulting from the layoff and hiring boom would “ripple” throughout the department over time, creating other long-lasting and less obvious administrative challenges than the immediate staffing deficit. In future years, for instance, it might struggle to address having too many promotion-eligible officers or not having enough seasoned officers to provide field training. Likewise, a hiring freeze can reverberate over time, later creating by contrast shortages of candidates for promotion.

In sum, the weakened economy has made personnel planning more difficult for police departments in terms of both workforce size and structure. Although these are different aspects of workforce planning, they should be considered together because a single staffing decision can affect both simultaneously, creating different management challenges at different times. Although reductions in workforce size have a more immediate and obvious affect on staffing, problems related to disrupting workforce structure may take years to manifest and can endure in departments that are fully staffed in times of economic recovery. Indeed, police agencies must “live with” past personnel decisions as the affected cohorts progress through the organization over time. In the section below, we extend this idea one step further, arguing that the specific affect of past staffing decisions depends on the type of cut made and the cohort structure at that time.

Reconsidering Workforce Planning: Planning Cuts and Cohorts in Tandem

Our major thesis is that workforce planning requires police managers to consider personnel strategies and the current cohort structure in tandem. To be sure, agencies’ hiring decisions are often influenced by restrictions imposed by various requirements articulated in collective bargaining contracts, civil service regulations, consent decrees, court orders, etc., which can limit their ability to target hire in an effort to create a balanced workforce. However, when and where flexibility exists, those tasked with police staffing should determine what is needed to achieve and maintain its desired personnel profile, use recruiting and retention strategies to attain it, and, importantly, continually monitor their personnel distributions so that if staffing cuts become necessary (or additions for that matter) they can be planned for strategically to manage the cohort structure over time. Thus, any one personnel strategy is more or less appropriate for an agency depending on its specific staffing goals and current structure. To demonstrate this point, Table 1 provides a taxonomy of staffing implications for different combinations of personnel actions and existing cohort structures.

Table 1.

Effects of Example Personnel Actions on Creating Balanced Cohort Distributions by Existing Cohort Distribution

	Existing cohort structure
Personnel action	Junior heavy	Senior heavy	Balanced
Hiring freeze/academy cancellation/not employing recruits completing the academy/unfilled attrition	Substantially better, reduces junior cohort	Substantially worse, reduces junior cohort	Moderately worse, reduces junior cohort
Layoff	Substantially better, assuming least senior targeted	Substantially worse, assuming least senior targeted	Moderately worse, assuming least senior targeted
Mandatory retirement	Substantially worse, further reduces senior cohort	Substantially better, reduces senior cohort	Moderately worse, reduces senior cohort

According to Table 1, the implications for junior-heavy agencies that lose junior personnel and senior-heavy agencies that lose senior personnel may be less serious because the disproportionately large cohort is reduced (and may actually correct an existing imbalance). By contrast, junior-heavy agencies that lose senior personnel and senior-heavy agencies that lose junior personnel may experience more serious problems because cuts would reduce an already “lean” cohort, which could exacerbate problems with a current imbalance. For example, a junior-heavy department that already lacks experience would lose even more if senior officers left, and junior officers would likely be promoted prematurely to vacant leadership positions. Finally, losing either junior or senior personnel would have moderate consequences for balanced departments. Losing junior staff would not diminish this cohort completely but could lead to later (albeit less severe) shortages of officers for promotion. Similarly, losing senior personnel would change the experience profile, but not likely create a leadership crisis.

Our taxonomy is heuristic, so these examples are illustrative, not exhaustive. In its configuration we also assume that most agencies strive for workforce balance similar to how we have described it, in which having either a junior- or senior-heavy structure (i.e., a cohort larger than would be efficient) is not desired. Its main purpose, however, is to demonstrate more generally that staffing decisions have implications for personnel management because of their effect on the current cohort structure, meaning that “cuts and cohorts” should be considered in tandem (no matter how “balance” is interpreted and whether or not it is desired). Later, we demonstrate empirically in some U.S. agencies the combinations shown in the taxonomy (e.g., a junior-heavy agency that lost junior personnel), and discuss the potential management challenges. Next, we discuss the data and methods for this and other analyses.

Data and Method

To examine staffing distributions among U.S. police agencies, we use data from RAND’s Police Recruitment and Retention Survey (Wilson, Rostker, & Fan, 2010). The RAND team surveyed every U.S. municipal police organization with at least 300 sworn officers on their current personnel and the effectiveness of their recruitment and retention programs. This seemingly arbitrary size “cut-off” was chosen as a compromise among (1) desiring to develop lessons specifically for large agencies that have experienced notable staffing difficulties; (2) focusing on agencies that are large enough to exhibit variation in patterns and experiences; (3) choosing agencies most likely able to provide the necessary data to examine personnel patterns; and (4) creating a sample size large enough conduct analysis but small enough to accommodate the modest survey budget (especially given the project team had to provide extensive follow-up and technical assistance to respondents). Given police work and experience varies considerably by agency size, this, of course, limits our findings to larger agencies, which represent a smaller fraction of policing relative to smaller agencies. Future research can explore the extent to which the issues we raise can be extended to smaller, nonurban agencies. The survey captures an extensive variety of staffing-related variables (e.g., recruiting practices and costs, hiring standards and procedures, applicant, and workforce attributes, career progression, compensation, attrition, and retirement), but most important for this research were items asking about the experience and rank structure of the workforce of each agency (for more information on the survey and the instrument used see Wilson et al., 2010). The sampling frame for the survey was the 2007 National Directory of Law Enforcement Agencies ® (NDLEA). The NDLEA is a standard, comprehensive list of police agencies that has been used as the sampling frame for national surveys in previous studies that have passed rigorous peer-review (Davis et al., 2004; Davis, Mariano, Pace, Cotton, & Steinberg, 2006; Gilmore Commission, 2003; Jordan, Fridell, Faggiani, & Kubu, 2009; Riley, Treverton, Wilson, & Davis, 2005; Taylor et al., 2006).

The RAND team developed the instrument based on their experience in working with large personnel systems, those used in previous police staffing surveys (Koper et al., 2002; Taylor et al., 2006; US Department of Justice, 2006), and discussions with police practitioners. They conducted two rounds of pretesting and refined the instrument based on feedback (including many face-to-face discussions about problem questions, confusing terms, and insufficient answer choices) from the police organizations in Columbus, Ohio; Las Vegas, Nevada; Dallas, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

To maximize response, the RAND team developed a comprehensive nonresponse protocol, provided ample field time for organizations to compile information and respond, and offered technical assistance to agencies as they completed the survey (for detail, see Wilson et al., 2010). Initially distributed on February 27, 2008, the survey was in the field for 38 weeks and resulted in a 73% response rate, which was fairly high given the complexity of the instrument. Of the 146 organizations with at least 300 sworn officers, 107 completed the survey (six organizations refused and the remainder provided no contact or information). This rate falls between other recent police staffing surveys. For example, Taylor et al.’s (2006) recruitment and hiring survey of a nationally representative sample of municipal, county, and state law enforcement agencies had a 46% response rate, whereas Koper et al. (2002) obtained an 89% response rate for their hiring and retention survey of all law enforcement agencies serving populations of at least 50,000. The response rate for the RAND survey was lower than the 2003 LEMAS, which was 95% and included all municipal, county, and state agencies with at least 100 sworn officers (US Department of Justice, 2006). The time required to complete any of these surveys likely varies greatly by organization, but the complexity of the RAND survey likely contributed to its response rate not being as high as others. Respondents were equivalent to the target population on all available measures: size of organization and community, region, annual wage earned in the community, unemployment, and violent and property crime (Wilson et al., 2010).

Although 107 respondents completed the survey, only 64 provided the data necessary to calculate and analyze personnel cohort structures. Wilson and Heinonen (2011) conducted a thorough analysis of the item nonresponse for this survey and illustrated that that those that did not provide at least half of the workforce-specific data requested were more likely to be situated in the Southern region of the United States (p = .06). However, they were no different from those providing all of the requested data in terms of size of organization and community, other regions, annual wage earned in the community, unemployment, and violent; and property crime.

Data from the RAND survey provided the basis for all of the analyses below. However, we supplemented them for the last analysis. We conducted Internet searches to identify media accounts of recent personnel strategies implemented by agencies in our sample. We discuss the potential implications of these specific strategies in light of the department’s actual cohort structure presented in the RAND data.

Results

Modeling the Police Department

The movement of personnel through very large systems—whether a police department, a military service system, or other “social system”—can often be modeled as a Markovian process (Merck and Hall, 1971). Doing a full modeling of individual police departments, however, required more data than were available from the RAND survey. Therefore, we approximated the results of a Markovian analysis by asking departments to indicate the proportion of officers at a number of year-of-service benchmark cells and interpolated between the benchmark cells. Figure 1 shows the average distribution for departments answering these questions.

Figure 1.

Average Years-of-Service Profile

Arguably, departments with this average profile are easier to manage compared to those that are further from it. Yearly recruitment patterns would tend to be very stable and a reasonably predictable number of officers would move through the ranks each year (i.e., they likely provide career opportunities attuned to their grade structure). Departments without this profile likely move between “boom” and “bust” as cohorts of different sizes progress through the system. At one point in time, the average patrol officer in such departments may have as little as 4 years of service; at another, as many as 12. This means that the cost and level of experience of the patrol force will vary over time, raising questions of the marginal cost of experience.

This “average” profile, however, hides substantial variation among departments. To examine this, we categorized the data into three variables: percentage of officers in the first decade of service (mean value of 48%), the second decade of service (mean value of 36%) and the third decade of service (mean value of 17%). To illustrate the problems departments may have when the ratios among these three seniority groups become unbalanced, we constructed Figure 2. This figure illustrates “balanced” and “unbalanced” personnel distributions as exhibited by actual agencies.

Figure 2.

Balanced and Unbalanced Distributions of Officers by Decade of Service

Department A is consistent with the average of all agencies, which is relatively balanced. The proportion of staff in each cohort is proportionally less than the previous one. The remaining agencies, however, exhibit patterns that could be problematic for personnel management. Because the total for the three decades must equal 100%, an increase in one category means a decrease in at least one of the others.

Department B has a very low proportion of officers in the most senior cohort, suggesting that it may lack experienced officers who can provide supervision and leadership.

Department C has a disproportionately large junior cohort. The problem of having fewer senior officers is exacerbated by the size of the junior cohort and the corresponding greater need for training, mentoring, and supervision. Further difficulties might arise as these officers retire and are replaced with even younger officers. Some junior personnel may need to fill leadership positions, but many, given competition within their cohort, will have little prospects for promotion. This might make those not promoted question their long-term commitment to the organization.

Department D has a very large midlevel cohort. This might contribute to future challenges in choosing low- and midlevel supervisors. The cost of personnel will also substantially increase as this large cohort progresses into the senior cohort (unless there is a pay ceiling on each rank as in many “step” systems).

Department E has an extremely small junior cohort and extremely large senior cohort. The personnel costs for this department are likely much greater than others (i.e., more experienced officers are paid more than junior officers). This department might also struggle to find young talent to cultivate and promote into leadership positions as the pool of junior candidates is smaller. As its senior cohort begins to retire, it will lose a large amount of experience and its profile will likely “flip” as the large senior cohort is replaced by a large junior cohort. This might create difficulties in training, mentoring, supervision, and career progression. This problem may, in part, be offset with lateral hires, which could help balance the workforce distribution, but agencies do not uniformly permit lateral hires.

Personnel Distributions Among Departments

Figures 3 and 4 show how cohort structures varied among departments in our sample. Figure 3 has departments whose first-decade force was larger than the mean of our sample. On the extreme right are departments with large cohorts of junior personnel, in which the last had 73% of its officers in the first decade of service but only 8% of its officers in the third. Most organizations that had more officers in their first decade did so to compensate for the lack of officers in their second decade (25%) or in the third decade (38%). In a number of cases, the larger number of first-decade officers reflected the shortage of more-senior officers in both the second and third decades.

Figure 3.

Distribution of Officers by Decade of Service Among Organizations With First-Decade Cohorts Greater Than the Average

Figure 4.

Distribution of Officers by Decade of Service Among Organizations With First-Decade Cohorts Less Than the Average

Figure 4 shows departments with lower proportions of officers in their first decade of service. The department with the smallest junior cohort had only 5% of its officers in the first decade of service but had 56% of its officers in the third. Most departments that had fewer officers in their first decade did so to compensate for the larger number of officers in their second decade or in the third decade. Six departments not only had fewer first-decade officers, but also had fewer second-decade officers, as well as a very large number of officers in their third decade. Conversely, five departments had higher numbers of second-decade officers and lower number of third-decade officers. In a number of cases, the smaller number of first-decade officers reflected the larger number of more-senior officers in both the second and third decades.

Departments with cohort structures that substantially differ from a balanced proportional distribution may experience continued oscillations in their personnel profile (e.g., large senior cohorts are replaced by large junior cohorts). Breaking personnel into 5-year cohorts, Figure 5 shows an agency in which this could occur. The two peaks indicate that the department hired heavily approximately “11 to 15” and “21 to 25” years ago and relatively lightly in the other years. Over time, these peaks will progress into the more-senior cohorts. Without specific intervention, each large senior cohort will retire and be replaced by a junior cohort, thereby repeating the cycle. Once a personnel system starts to oscillate, efforts centered on filling vacancies with new recruits will not dampen the oscillations. Instead, a department may need to change the normal attrition patterns or fill year-of-service voids by hiring laterally from other departments, which is not always possible and could plateau current junior officers.

Figure 5.

One Police Organization’s Cohort Structure That may Lead to Oscillation

The Economy, Cuts, and Cohorts: Case Examples

Finally, we explore the potential affect of the weakened economy on police personnel planning. Specifically, we discuss some possible management challenges for departments in our sample given a recent personnel loss (or impending loss) resulting from the recession and their current cohort structure. Each section below combines a general cohort structure (e.g., junior-heavy, senior-heavy, balanced) with a general personnel loss (e.g., lose junior, lose senior).

We realize that data from the RAND survey are cross-sectional and do not speak directly to these projections, and a full examination of the relationship between personnel decisions and cohort structures over time requires longitudinal data. Until such data become available, we can only infer the potential personnel management challenges given a department’s current cohort structure (from the RAND survey) and a staffing cut as reported in the media. At minimum, however, these examples offer insight for continued research by showing how together these factors could lead to cohort oscillations in personnel systems, ceteris paribus.

Junior-heavy/lose junior

In 2009, the City of Orlando declined federal funding to hire 25 new police officers, citing that budget problems would prevent them from supporting the outstanding portion of the officers’ salary and equipment costs (Schlueb, 2009). This situation, therefore, represents “losing” junior personnel in terms of avoiding new hires (rather than losing current junior personnel). Although hiring a wave of new officers sounds positive, not doing so in this case is advantageous given the department’s current cohort structure. Almost 55% of Orlando’s sworn force is in their first decade of service whereas the senior cohort makes up only less than eight percent, one of the lowest proportions in the sample. Thus, the new officers would add further “weight” to an already heavy junior cohort. This could result in a lack of staff to provide field training, career plateaus because too many officers would be promotion-eligible at the same time (which goes beyond the fact that promotions are limited by availability), or a large retirement wave years later as the cohort aged.

Senior-heavy/lose senior

The proportion of senior personnel in the Dayton Police Department is much greater than the sample’s proportional average (i.e., 33% versus 17%), and is therefore better suited to absorb losses to senior personnel. Thus, the fact that 10% of Dayton’s sworn force (i.e., 31 senior officers) will retire by the end of 2011 (Page, 2010) may not need to be addressed through retention strategies (e.g., implementing longevity pay increases or a deferred retirement option). The department would lose some experience, but these retirements would allow midcareer officers, whose progression may have been stalled by the large senior cohort, to be promoted. Furthermore, the retirements could reduce total personnel costs for the department.

The difficulty with Dayton’s situation is that the department’s junior cohort is much smaller than the average (i.e., 35% versus 48%), which is similar in other very senior-heavy departments (e.g., Houston, Buffalo, Toledo, San Diego). In Dayton, however, budget shortages prevent the city from hiring new patrol officers to fill the resulting vacancies, with police officials not expecting new officers to assume duty until 2012 at the earliest (Page, 2010). Dayton’s personnel situation (i.e., attrition without hiring) represents a “double-edged sword” given their current cohort structure. The loss of senior personnel will “thin” the department’s heavy third-decade cohort but the inability to bolster the junior cohort may create additional problems in the future.

Junior-heavy/lose senior

Comprising 60% of the sworn force, the Sacramento Police Department’s first-decade cohort is among the largest in the sample (and well above the sample average), whereas the size of the second- and third-decade cohorts are below average. Recently, it was announced that 9 of 11 members of the command staff are eligible to retire within 3 years (Minugh, 2011). Likewise, the San Bernardino Police Department has a comparable cohort structure and experienced a similar loss in which 22 ranking officers either accepted demotions or were laid off (Glenn & Edwards, 2009). The most immediate consequence for such departments would be losing experience when it is already at a premium. This could then spur the promotion of less-experienced officers to supervisory positions. Over the long-term, these promotions could plateau the remaining first- and second-decade officers as it could be decades before the newly promoted officers reach retirement age.

Senior-heavy/lose junior

The Buffalo Police Department has the third lowest percentage of first-decade officers (21%) coupled with some of the largest second- and third-decade cohorts. A recently proposed hiring freeze which would leave vacant 43 police officer positions could exacerbate this situation. The Cleveland Police department faces a similar dilemma, but to a lesser extent. Cleveland has above-average senior cohorts (especially the second-decade group) and a below-average first-decade cohort. In June 2011, the academy graduated 42 police cadets, who were then immediately laid off because of budget cuts (MSNBC.com, 2011). If these departments are unable to bolster their first-decade cohort there may be in the future too few junior personnel to fill vacancies as the older cohorts begin to retire.

Balanced/lose junior

The examples above show how personnel losses can exacerbate existing workforce imbalances, but they can also create them in balanced departments. The Tallahassee Police Department could be considered balanced with its large first-decade cohort and proportionately smaller senior cohorts. In fact, the size of all three cohorts is within about one percent of the sample average. In 2009, however, city budget cuts forced the department to consider laying off 13 new officers with less than a year on the force (Montanaro, 2009). These layoffs would disrupt a once well-proportioned junior cohort, though the implications might be more moderate (as compared to if the first-decade was below average).

Balanced/lose senior

Like Dayton, the Fresno Police Department may also experience “senior attrition without hiring.” Specifically, the Chief along with 18 other “long-time” officers all plan to retire within the same month (Herr, 2011). A new chief would be hired but, because of budget cuts, the other positions would be eliminated and remain unfilled (Herr, 2011). Because Fresno is more balanced than Dayton, for them the affect might be less serious. As the junior cohort is not disproportionately large, the threat of future promotion blockages from having fewer positions may not be severe. Also, the department would immediately lose several experienced officers, but as the senior cohort is proportionate, any disruption to the experience profile would be minimal.

Discussion

The literature in policing and other professions highlights the importance of managing cohorts to meet the needs of the personnel within the organization and the organization itself. Our findings demonstrate that there is considerable variation in the sizes of the personnel cohorts among large, US police organizations. For example, some are heavily weighted with either junior or senior officers. The relative sizes of the cohorts have tremendous implications for personnel management, including recruitment, training, supervision, career progression, cost, expertise, meeting workload demands; etc.

With the depressed economy, more and more communities are being forced to reduce their investment in public safety. Cuts that affect police staffing alter the workforce structure, thereby having both immediate and potentially long-term implications for meeting the needs of the organization (and community) and its personnel. Managing disruptions to workforce structure can be very difficult. Funding, collective bargaining, contracts, equity, employment laws and other issues may reduce options for encouraging or requiring the growth or reduction of specific cohorts (e.g., allowing lateral hires of senior officers or “buyout” packages for junior officers).

This makes it imperative to manage cohorts proactively. Our findings help in this regard as they introduce the notion that not all forms of staff reductions are created equally. Each has a unique influence on an organization workforce structure. The most important lesson of this research is that administrators, when considering staffing reductions, need to assess the likely effects of alternative options on the organization’s existing and future workforce structure. These decisions are undoubtedly complex, but with all else being equal and when they have flexibility to do so (i.e., are not constrained by mandates, contracts, etc.), administrators should choose the option that best maintains or moves the organization toward its desired workforce structure. In some situations, a combination of strategies may be most prudent to offset effects on different cohorts, such as canceling an academy class and offering a buyout package for midlevel and senior officers.

Our discussion has largely focused on the role of cohorts within police organizations and how current personnel decisions in the spirit of saving resources may affect them. We should raise three issues about this emphasis. First, as suggested by the interdisciplinary literature that serves as the foundation of our research, workforce structures and cohorts are relevant in all types of large institutions—not just police organizations. As such, these same issues are relevant for other criminal justice organizations. For example, after 2 years of layoffs, the Fresno County Jail recently announced plans to hire “dozens” of correctional staff, allowing them to reopen jail floors closed earlier because of staffing shortages (Alexander, 2011). It is critical for jail administrators to understand how the initial layoffs affected the cohort structure and, accordingly, plan their upcoming hiring strategy around it. Related, the Superior Court in San Francisco is facing having to layoff 40% of its court personnel (about 200 employees) and also shuttering 25 courtrooms (Shuler, 2011). These impending cuts could better be absorbed by the court system if officials are able to plan for them in light of current workforce structure. In sum, we used police organizations to demonstrate such staffing lessons, but they apply to criminal justice organizations in general. Just like police departments, jails, prisons, and courts operate on public funding and, therefore, all face managing cohorts amidst a down-economy and increasing reductions. Future research should examine personnel distributions in these other criminal justice organizations to compare and contrast their staffing situations to those presented here for law enforcement.

The second issue important to point out is that, as workforce structures are affected by any change in staffing level, it is equally important to consider them when adding personnel as when reducing it. As Figure 5 illustrated, the significant hiring that the example organization conducted over a decade ago affects personnel management today and will continue to do so in the future. Similar to proposed reductions, knowing the existing workforce structure, whether it can be made more efficient, and how different hiring strategies may assist in that process can help administrators choose the best course of action to meet the needs of the organization and its personnel.

The final issue we will raise about our examination is that seniority-based cohorts are one of many attributes that can be considered when evaluating the efficiency of workforce structures. For example, other equally important attributes might include diversity of skill sets or racial/ethnic and gender composition. The chief of police in Pittsburgh, for instance, recently described the department’s struggles in recruiting and retaining a force that reflects the diversity of the community (see Wilson & Grammich, 2009, p. 12). Our focus on cohorts simply served to demonstrate the importance of considering aspects of staffing beyond the workforce level—namely the constitution of the workforce itself—when making personnel decisions.

Because this research breaks new ground in terms of thinking about workforce structures in police organizations, it perhaps raises more questions than it answers. Fortunately, this provides fertile ground to develop future research. An important area to begin concerns the nature of the cohorts themselves. We discovered that the relative sizes of seniority-based cohorts varied greatly among the largest, U.S., municipal police organizations. Given a limitation of our research is that it focused exclusively on these types of agencies, it would be useful to know if this variation also occurs in police organizations that are not quite as large, serve jurisdictions other than central cities, and are located in other countries. Likewise, research could explore the extent to which cohort structures differ among other criminal justice institutions, and if and how they shift over time. Studies on these issues could also try to analyze the cohorts more precisely (10-year classes may be too broad), such as by examining the distribution of personnel by single years of service. Finally, it would be useful to explore empirically the link between cohort structures and personnel problems. Our data limited us from conducting these analyses and permitted us only to infer these linkages, but future research could answer these questions by analyzing the master personnel files of police organizations and connecting them to specific instances of personnel difficulties. We believe that the current study makes progress toward such research by demonstrating variation in personnel cohort structures.

Both theory and practice would benefit from better understanding both the causes and effects of these structures. We know the structures are created from discrete personnel decisions, but research could examine factors associated with specific kinds of decisions and under what context they occur. Similarly, we identified how personnel management can be affected by cohort structures (e.g., the difficulty of providing field training to officers when junior cohorts are substantially larger then senior cohorts). Analysis could describe how and to what extent these problems occur, what other workforce attributes “matter”, and the ways in which organizations handle them. Case studies of organizations that attempt to actively manage their cohort structures could identify promising strategies for evaluation and implementation by others. Given the current climate of diminishing resources, a particularly important area of inquiry is the relationship between cohort structures and cost. For example, the cost of providing police service (or any function such as patrol) in a given community could be significantly higher if staffed largely by senior as opposed to junior officers. To be sure, the quality of service may be higher given the average experience of the officers organization would be greater, but knowing the cost can begin a discussion about, among other issue, the affordability of various structures, whether the marginal benefits of more-senior officers outweigh the marginal costs, and whether personnel should be reallocated to make best use of their experience.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported by grant number 2006-DD-BX- 0025 awarded by the National Institute o f Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.

Bios

Jeremy M. Wilson is Research Director and Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and also serves as Director of the Anti-Product Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program at Michigan State University. His current policing research focuses on evidence-based personnel planning, public safety consolidation, and staffing allocation and deployment.

Justin A. Heinonen is Assistant Professor for the Anti-Product Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. His research interests include product counterfeiting, environmental criminology and police staffing. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in criminal justice.

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