Mobility and the Establishment of a Career System in Police Personnel Administration

Abstract

The police field, as presently constituted, does not provide a Career System for its practitioners. Large individual police agencies, it is true, may offer diversified opportunities for its employees, but the police field, as a whole, lacks this element of sound personnel practices. Instead, each of the nearly 50,000 police jurisdictions in the nation provides its employees with its own version of a closed police career system. True systems are characterized, among other things, by job mobility; they permit and encourage transfer of employees from one assignment to another, from one agency to another. Job mobility within the police field, however, is drastically limited. For the young man or woman entering police work as a it is tremendously important that they select the agency at the beginning of their employment. What opportunities exist for them in police work are normally limited to the opportunities available within their own agency. Their opportunities to transfer to another agency except at that agency's entrance level are practically non-existent. As the recruit rises through the ranks of his agency, his opportunity for transfer diminishes. Should he find it necessary to move to another jurisdiction, for health or other reasons, he would normally find it necessary to enter his field again on the entrance level. The absence of a police system, under any legitimate definition of that term, and the inability of police personnel to transfer to other jurisdictions complicates the administration of the police function. Young men and women are limited to only one or two mistakes in selecting a employer. After the age of 30 many jurisdictions will not accept these people as applicants. If the person had been reasonably successful, he (she) may have too much invested to transfer to another agency. A history showing more han one or two employers may be taken as an ind cator of personal instability. Truly, the ca eerinded person must make his or her choice of first employer very carefully. This situation probably limits the number of compete t young people who desire to enter law enfo cement as a professional calling. Surely it p nalizes many persons who desire to transfer to other agencies but find themselves trapped for life. Even an unusually competent person, finding himself in a dead-end job, may lose his spark, may lo e his motivation to do a creditable job of serving the public. T e loss of competent administrative personnel is even ore critical. As the person advances through the ranks, his value to the police field should increase. His present agency, however, may lack the right opening. Another agency may have such an opening. Normally that person is trapped. His inability to effect a transfer across jurisdictional lines is symptomatic of a common practice in police personnel administration. The present paper will focus attention on this cr tical aspect of personnel administration. It will attempt to define the problem, to isolate obstacles to the establishment of a police system. It will conclude with a proposed system for effecting such a pattern on an experimental basis.