Law enforcement manpower analysis: an enhanced calculation model

 This study aims to advance the existing analytic model to include staff allocation information at thedistrict level. Maintaining adequate size of staff is essential to law enforcement agencies’ ability to ensure socialorder, fight crime and, increasingly, deliver a widening range of social services. Review of the scientificliterature on police size of force and staffing calculation models indicates that this line of inquiry (i.e. manpoweranalysis) is attentive to population size and workload demands but generally inattentive to how servicedemands are affected by community-level variables. Current staffing calculation models specify number ofstaff needed for a jurisdiction but do not inform the allocation of personnel across districts within thejurisdiction.

 To address this problem, the current study illustrates an enhancedanalytic model to provide law enforcement staffing recommendations for a southern coastal county. Anintegrated per capita-workload manpower analysis model first factors the minimum number of lawenforcement deputies needed per population size served and recent history workload demands and thenexecutes the six-step workload model process. This study enhances staffing analysis by adding an additionalseventh arithmetical step indicating the staffing needs by districts across a jurisdiction.Findings – The results from the integrated per capita-workload analysis indicate the need to hire additionaldeputies to meet current and future demands.

 centers on the need to include drivers of police services identified but notmeasured in this study’s application of the hybrid manpower analysis model and its replication potential.Keywords Manpower analysis, Strength of force, Law enforcement staffing