Understanding disproportionate female completion rates at police academies

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates gender differences in graduation rates for police trainees in the nationwide sample of police academies collected in 2018 by the Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies. The study explores which characteristics of the police academies can explain the lower levels of graduation for female trainees when compared to their male counterparts. The findings suggest that the stress environment, the gender ratio of trainees, the instructors’ minimum education, the affiliation of the police academy with an academic institution, and the length of the program play an important role in explaining lower graduation rates for female trainees. When scrutinizing the specific reasons for failure, female trainees are more likely to fail due to challenges encountered in firearms training, driving lessons, and physical fitness instruction, but not due to overall academic performance. The female trainees are also twice as likely to voluntarily admit to failure and withdraw as their male counterparts.

KEYWORDS:

• Police academies
• police workforce diversity
• female police officers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. - https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/equality-denied-status-women-policing.

2. - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-74.

3. - https://datausa.io/profile/soc/police-officers.

4. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/state-and-local-law-enforcement-training-academies-2013.

5. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/state-and-local-law-enforcement-training-academies-2018-statistical-tables.

6. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/state-and-local-law-enforcement-training-academies-2018-statistical-tables.

7. - - https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/state-and-local-law-enforcement-training-academies-2018-statistical-tables.

8. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/state-and-local-law-enforcement-training-academies-2006.

9. − Estimates are based on 2018 CLETA data.

10. - see for more details https://web.archive.org/web/20160617004241/https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/maps/reference/us_regdiv.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Alexander Bowers

David A. Bowers, Jr. is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of South Alabama. He has published numerous articles in criminal justice journals, including Criminal Justice Review and Criminal Justice Policy Review. Professor Bowers was a consultant for the Alabama Department of Youth Services for 12 years. In addition, he has received federal grant funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJD) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Olga B. Semukhina

Olga B. Semukhina is an Associate Professor at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Public Administration at Tarleton State University. Dr. Semukhina received her MS and PhD degrees from University of Central Florida and her JD and LLM degrees from Tomsk State University, Russia. Prior to joining Tarleton, Dr. Semukhina worked for 10 years as an Assistant and Associate Professor of criminology and law studies at Marquette University. Before going into academia, Dr. Semukhina worked as a criminal defense attorney in Russia. Dr. Semukhina has over 15 years of experience working with various law enforcement agencies in Florida, Wisconsin and Texas conducting evidence-based research on public views of police, intelligence and law enforcement data-sharing, spatial analysis for law enforcement crime-reduction strategies, and targeted community-policing efforts. Semukhina is proficient in both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques including, but not limited to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, categorical data analysis, social network analysis, latent growth curve analysis and hierarchical linear modeling. Dr. Semukhina have a long history of funded research. She was a co-PI on grants from U.S. State Department and NIJ research grant on topics related to police.

Kenneth Mike Reynolds

K. Mike Reynolds is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of South Alabama. He retired as an Associate Professor from the University of Central Florida. He received three Fulbright awards, has published in Justice Quarterly and numerous other international journals. He has received numerous federally funded grants, worked in Juvenile and Adult Drug Court for more than a decade, and developed a state-wide law enforcement information sharing system that remains operational twenty-one years later. His primary focus has been on crime analysis combined with international policing, corruption, and the judicial research.