NCJ Number
233580
Date Published
September 2010
Length
74 pages
Annotation
This guide explains steps a law enforcement agency can take to ensure the best possible health of the agency's workforce.
Abstract
The guide presents an overview of occupational health and safety for law enforcement, explains the benefits of these programs for police agencies, presents a comprehensive three-part approach to occupational health and safety programs, and offers solutions to various problems a department may encounter while implementing a plan or program of this nature. The guide's first section reviews occupational health and safety in the workplace from international and domestic perspectives, with attention to how law enforcement agencies have implemented these principles in the past. This section also includes an overview of research on the benefits of various occupational health program components. These components encompass physical fitness programs and stress management programs. Also discussed in this section are research findings on the economic benefits of occupational health and safety programs for law enforcement personnel. The first section concludes with a discussion of the value of law enforcement occupational health. The guide's second section describes the officer safety program of the Fairfax County Police Department (Virginia). The guide's third section explains how to conduct a "gap analysis" of a department's current health and safety components, so as to determine whether the agency reflects the basic tenets of the knowledge, prevention and control, and maintenance and improvement outlined in the guide. The fourth section of the guide identifies the challenges that accompany designing and implementing the components of a safety and health program for law enforcement personnel, accompanied by recommendations for addressing each challenge. Appended occupational health and safety program gap-analysis checklist specific to pandemic influenza, and relevant selections from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies, Fifth Edition