NCJ Number
92335
Date Published
1983
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The police agencies surveyed in the United States and Canada have undergone changes in personnel selection procedures but always within the parameters of a negative selection philosophy (screening out those with identified weaknesses); a positive approach that seeks information about applicants' trainability is to be preferred.
Abstract
The comparative results reported on police personnel practices pertain to data collected on 85 U.S. agencies that participated in the mail survey and telephone interview and 35 Canadian departments that returned the mail questionnaire. The mail survey was intended to identify those departments that had redesigned their selection process within the last 10 years to accommodate female and minority applicants and to determine those departments that had participated in a personnel selection research study. The survey focused on written tests, substitutes for the written test, oral interviews, selecting trainable candidates as opposed to qualified candidates, minorities and females, and selection systems for departments of public safety if different from police departments. The agencies in both countries are similar in their use of the traditional selection system that uses a written exam, psychological screening, oral interview, background investigation, and physical agility testing; however, the countries are dissimilar in the sequencing of the selection stages and in the use of the polygraph. To some degree all departments endorse the negative selection philosophy, which seeks to screen out applicants with identified weaknesses. An improvement would be to reconceptualize police selection as a process by which applicants would be screened in entirely on the basis of positive attributes and their potential ability to be trained to perform law enforcement tasks. Eight notes and 24 references are provided.