Women and Minorities in the Work Force of Law-Enforcement Agencies

Abstract

The idea of representative bureaucracy has provoked an important series of debates in the literature about police personnel management and representation of women and racial minorities. The critical questions in this study are: (a.) Does the sworn police force reasonably reflect a cross section of the groups being policed? and (b.) What factors are considered in representation of women and minority police officers in law-enforcement agencies? Black and Hispanic representation on police forces is closely associated with its presence in community populations. Regions vary in the degree of female and minority representation, blacks being better represented in southern police forces than elsewhere; women are better represented in the northwest. However, findings reveal that men, mostly whites, continue to hold disproportionately more sworn positions in most law-enforcement agencies. The models of female and minority representation also illustrate the degree of female and minority hiring by analyzing four major contributing factors: economic, organizational, demographic, and legal.