Intervention Plan
Assess the potential impact of human resources policies on the law enforcement or correctional organization and its culture. Create recruitment strategies that would alleviate identified cultural issues within the organization. Provide a rationale for each strategy that addresses aspects including issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, experience, and education.
Intervention Plan
Human Resource Management is one of the essential processes in any organization. The policies developed by the human resource department of the organization determine the success of the organization in terms of functioning and development. Law enforcement organizations, just like any other nongovernmental or governmental organization, have a human resource department in place. The human resource department conducts human resource management through areas that include recruitment and selection, training, promotion and transfer, leadership, motivation and incentive, performance appraisal, and compensation management. For the human resource management process to function within an organization, several policies are developed and created (Oliver, 2014). The policies are used as guidance or references for human resource management within the organization. This paper provides an analysis of the potential impact of human resource policies on the law enforcement organization and its culture. The paper also includes recruitment strategies that can be applied to alleviate cultural issues within the law enforcement organization.
Impact of Human Resources Policies on the Law Enforcement Organization and Its Culture
The human resource policies enforced in law enforcement organizations in the past have resulted in the development of a culture that has impacts on the organization. Some of the effects of human resource policies that have been identified to the law enforcement organization and its culture include lack of diversity composition. The culture in the Unitec States police recruitment had developed the perspective that law enforcement officer is Whites (Oliver, 2020). The association of police officers to Whites resulted in a lower number of other ethnic groups and minorities being represented in the law enforcement organization. The other factor that has resulted in continued underrepresented ethnic minorities in law enforcement is the continued usage of the same recruitment policies and processes. The recruitment strategies that were used when most candidates were the ethnic majority did not consider factors that should be considered when recruiting individuals from an ethnic minority, hence eliminating most of the few candidates availed.
The human resource culture in law enforcement rarely involves the attempts of the human resource managers fully informing communities, especially in ethnic communities, regarding the aspects for one to be a successful candidate relative to qualifications, background investigations, testing, and how to successfully complete the police academy. The impact of lack of communication is reflected in the law number of candidates that qualify to join the law enforcement community (National Institute of Justice, 2019). Another impact on the law enforcement organization that is associated with the human resource policies low gender balance in eh organization. Human resource policies have ended up developing a culture that defines law enforcement as a career for the male gender. Other barriers that have been determined to play a part in restraining women from joining the law enforcement organization include adverse or hostile environments that are considered fit for male counterparts, skewed physical fitness assessment, sexism, double standards, and potential female recruits lacking community support. The barriers for female entry into law enforcement organizations have resulted in fewer female police officers.
Additionally, the intersectionality between race and gender plays an important part in the rate of which women get the opportunity to join the law enforcement organization. Most recruiting teams are composed of white male patrol officers and mid-level management staff, which are considered to have affected the rate in which blacks respond to police recruitment processes. Several studies have determined that the rate of hiring black applicants is mostly high if the hiring agents in the organization are blacks. The culture among blacks has also developed around such aspects, which then conflicts with the human resource strategy of law enforcement organization of using white recruiting officers.
However, law enforcement organizations have been applying policies that have an impact on recruitment and developing positive views within all ethnic and racial groups. For instance, the human resource policy involving salaries and incentive considerations since most applicants consider the wages provided. The law enforcement organizations that offer low salaries tend to receive fewer applications. It is also hard for such law enforcement agencies to achieve employee retention due to market conditions and their agencies compared with the salary policies of others. The human resource of law enforcement organizations also uses financial incentives as a method of attracting candidates. Some of the major incentive considerations used include special education, signing bonuses, paid salaries while in the academy, tuition reimbursement, health club membership, mortgage discounts, increased salary with higher education, and take home cars (Langham, 2020). Although the law enforcement agency attains its goal of employee retention and recruitment, the incentives come with a cultural impact that brands law enforcement officers with a lack of passion.
Recruitment Strategies
Achieving effective recruitment strategies requires human resource management in the law enforcement organization to consider varies factors that have an impact on the recruitment process. Some of the recruitment strategies that can address the cultural issues within law enforcement human resource management include the strategy that contains recruiting information that is encouraging and easy to follow. The information regarding recruitment can be provided through the law-enforcement website and social platforms, with support of officers send to conduct community-based mobilization. The community-based mobilization can be used to target ethnic groups and women to encourage them to apply for law enforcement opportunities (Matthies, Keller & Lim, 2012). Another recruitment strategy that can be applied is through culturally unbiased testing. In order to achieve diversity within the law enforcement organization, equality should start in the early stages of recruitment, such as testing. Providing tests that do not suggest any form of cultural, racial, gender, or ethnic bias encourages each recruit to move further in the application progress.
Conducting recruitment that is based on the targeted population or geographical location can be applied as a strategy to create a balance in the law enforcement organization. In the target recruitments strategy, the human resource department contacts an analysis that provides the organization with the structure to identify the race, gender, ethnicity, and community representation within the organization. The human resource policies should then be developed using such analysis to target population or community with less representation the law enforcement. The target recruitment strategy is also an effective measure of increasing the law enforcement force size.
Law enforcement organization finds it difficult to achieve diversity due to strict application requirements and processes. The recruitment approach that should be taken to fully diversify the law enforcement agency is by tailoring the application process and requirements to fit a standard capable of supporting diversity. The strategy should be able to remove some of the common recruitment and hiring barriers, such as educational requirements, which normally are set at a high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate. The educational qualification can be lowered to include blacks and Hispanics since they have a lower graduation rate of up to 20% lower than the whites. Fitness requirements can be reduced to incorporate more female candidates and to cover regions with high obesity rates (Matthies, Keller & Lim, 2012). Background history is another requirement that acts as a barrier for recruitment, making it difficult to achieve diversity. For instance, the juvenile arrest rate for blacks is almost twice the rate for whites, more than five times for violent crime, and almost double for offenses related to drugs. With such statistics, it becomes impossible to achieve diversity since most blacks would be disqualified based on their background history. Therefore, the law enforcement human resource should consider alternatives such as basing the recruitment process on the most recent behavior and predictive job performance, which will offer more ethnic minorities to join law enforcement.
The human resource can also develop long-term programs for the appropriate neighborhood as a recruitment strategy. The long-term program’s strategy comprises of law enforcement programs that can play a significant role in increasing the quality and quantity of prospect applicants through the provision of training, a positive environment, and discipline that enables the youth to stay of trouble. Examples of long-range programs that can be implemented in the appropriate neighborhood include the Police Academy Magnet Schools (PAMS) and the Police Explorers (PE).
References
Langham, B. (2020). Millennials and Improving Recruitment in Law Enforcement. International Association of Chiefs of Police. Retrieved from https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/millennials-and-improving-recruitment/
Matthies, C., Keller, K., & Lim, N. (2012). Identifying Barriers to Diversity in Law Enforcement Agencies. RAND. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2012/RAND_OP370.pdf
National Institute Of Justice. (2019). Women in Policing: Breaking Barriers and Blazing a Path. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/252963.pdf
Oliver, P. (2020). Creating a Multicultural Law Enforcement Agency: An Intentional Priority. . International Association of Chiefs of Police. Retrieved from https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/creating-a-multicultural-law-enforcement-agency/
Oliver, P. (2014). Recruitment, Selection & Retention of Law Enforcement Officers. Faculty Books. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/faculty_books/164
