Justice Workforce Development, Staffing, & Performance

Conducting rigorous and innovative research to provide practical solutions to staffing challenges.

Workforce development issues, including recruitment and retention, continue to be among the greatest challenges facing law enforcement agencies and other criminal legal system organizations today. Through strong partnerships with police departments, state and local government agencies, and professional associations, RTI is on the forefront of conducting rigorous and innovative research that provides practical solutions to these critical staffing challenges. RTI is adept at understanding and addressing workforce issues that apply across locations and contexts as well as those that are specific to certain occupations, roles, regions, organizations, and employee groups.

RTI uses multiple data sources to identify staffing solutions, including administrative data and information collected through focus groups and interviews, surveys, policy and document reviews, career websites, and social media. RTI conducts basic research to understand staffing challenges as well as intervention research, in which we implement and evaluate promising practices for improving recruitment, retention, workload, and performance. RTI also conducts training and technical and technical assistance to help agencies implement evidence-based solutions in ways that are effective, sustainable, and tailored to their specific needs and constraints.

Project Highlights

From Research to Reality: Recruiting More Women into the Policing Profession

Women are severely underrepresented in law enforcement. While women account for roughly half of the U.S. population and 58% of the American civilian labor force, only 12% of police officers in America are women. The number of women in law enforcement has only increased 2% since 2000. Increasing the number of women in law enforcement would not only help departments better reflect the communities they serve; more women police can increase police legitimacy and trust within communities. Policewomen can also improve department performance; for example, research has shown that they have higher reporting and clearance rates for rape cases and use less force when policing. RTI’s Recruiting Women in Policing study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, is helping police practitioners and researchers understand 1) reasons behind the lack of female representation, and 2) specific messages and strategies to recruit and retain women police. Throughout the project, the team is:

Conducting a review of agencies’ online recruitment materials
Holding groups with over 70 women in law enforcement
Conducting online experiments to see what kinds of recruitment materials women prefer
Implementing and evaluating practices to improve recruitment of women in two law enforcement agencies
Broadly disseminating actionable findings

Advancing Service-oriented Policing through Inclusion, Relationship-building, & Engagement (ASPIRE)

As a profession, policing struggled to keep pace with the changing needs of communities as well as prospective police professionals. Through this cooperative agreement with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, RTI is developing innovative solutions to modernizing the policing workforce. The objectives of ASPIRE are to conduct outreach, dissemination, and engagement around recruitment and retention program strategies; develop and pilot police mentoring and student engagement programs in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs); convene solutions-oriented workshops; and develop resources for local police agencies, aspiring police officers, and other stakeholder groups to improve the recruitment, retention, and support of diverse officers. ASPIRE is a joint effort between RTI; the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators; the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives; and Clark Atlanta, Howard, and Southern Universities.

Real-world Engagement & Turnover Analysis to Inform New Solutions (RETAINS): An Evidence-Based Policing Workforce Study

Maintaining the staffing levels needed to adequately serve communities and protect public safety is one of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement agencies today, but research has not yet identified what agencies can do to address it. Funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the project team is identifying key drivers in turnover and developing concrete strategies to mitigate them through a landscape analysis, officer preference survey, analysis of administrative data, and the development of “stay” and exit interview guides that can be used by any agency to improve retention. RETAINS is a collaboration between RTI and the 30x30 Initiative, which aims for 30% of all police recruits to be women by the year 2030.

Colorado Adult Protective Services (APS) Workload Study

Colorado’s APS program intervenes on behalf of at-risk adults to prevent situations involving abuse, caretaker neglect, exploitation, harmful acts, or self-neglect. Given substantial increases in cases and anecdotal evidence from the field that case management may have become more challenging and resource intensive, RTI implemented a mixed-methods study to generate recommendations on (1) factors related to optimal workload, staffing, and training necessary to maintain a strong, well-trained, and stable workforce; and (2) financial resources needed to sustain and improve the APS program and client outcomes across Colorado.